“Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any
deep influence on our lives. In later life we admire, we are entertained, we
may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books
merely a confirmation of what it is in our minds already; as in a love affair
it is our own features that we see reflected flatteringly back. But in
childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future, and
like the fortune teller who sees a long journey in the cards or death by water
they influence the future. I suppose that is why books excited us so much. What
do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation
in those first fourteen years?...It is in those early years that I would look
for the crisis, the moment when life took a new slant in its journey towards
death.”—English novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, playwright, and
journalist Graham Greene (1904-1991),
The Lost Childhood and Other Essays
(1951)
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