The words that remain with me

My workday lunchtime novel (Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene) has an interesting story line, some engaging characters and a few surprising, beautiful paragraphs. The following is one of them.

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.

I often think that my views on life have been colored by the movies I watch, but somehow I forget about all the hundreds of books I've read. Anne of Green Gables. Little House on the Prairie. A Wrinkle in Time. Mister God, This Is Anna. (Sweet Valley Twins.) The characters in these books have been more than real to me. And now I wonder, have I read the right books? Not just concerning love, but concerning all things. There hasn't been time to read enough good books. I will never catch up.