Martin Shone

“I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Through the Magic Door

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“When we know everything about this earth, the romance and poetry will all have been wiped away from it. There is nothing so artistic as a haze.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure