Starting a novel is like opening a door on a misty landscape; you can see very little, but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing from the first page. (Iris Murdoch)
The first book you love is like the first real kiss; it transports you to where you dimly dreamed of being all along. You ride on a raft of words to a place deep within. (Mandaleine Blais)
The hopelessly stuck would find it expensive but worth it to hire a gunman to pound on the door and threaten death as a spur to composition. (Jacques Barzun)
