Lagniappe

From my quote journal.

"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out? They follow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem. They know their quarry! ... It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its career--it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and makes you read it. ... Words can't describe the cunning of some books. You'll think you've shaken them off your trail, and then one day some innocent-looking customer will pop in and begin to talk, and you'll know he's an unconscious agent of book-destiny. ... That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it."

"I know what you mean," said Titania. "I haven't read much Bernard Shaw, but I feel I shall have to. He meets me at every turn, bullying me. And I know lots of people who are simply terrorized by H. G. Wells. Every time one of his books comes out, and that's pretty often, they're in a perfect panic until they've read it."

Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop