Reading old friends

“In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried. The meeting with remembered and well-loved passages is like the continual greeting of old friends; nothing is so warming and companionable.

“Yet tonight, as so often when the mind is tortured by some undecided question, everything he read seemed to have some bearing upon his problem, all his old friends seemed to have something to say to him and most of the time it was something that he did not in the least want to hear.”

-from The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge