Outside of this, he hardly ever ventured beyond the thirty or so volumes he owned. I got the impression that this was not only out of the desire to be frugal, to remain light, to be able at any moment to move, but also to be, if not rooted in a physical location, habitually residing in the same literary terrain, with its familiar quarters, loved lines half forgotten, and to know, over a lifetime, as much as possible about a few books, until they came to seem like native land.
