The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. - Ross Macdonald
The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present. - Ross Macdonald
Try listening to yourself sometime, alone in a transient room in a strange town. The worst is when you draw a blank, and the ash-blonde ghosts of the past carry on long twittering long-distance calls with your inner ear, and there's no way to hang up. - Ross Macdonald