"And so, when I returned to Ulsgaard and saw all the books, I pounced on them in a real hurry and with an almost bad conscience. At that time I somehow had a presentiment, which I so often felt later on, that we didn't have the right to open a book if we weren't committed to reading all of them. With every line you broke off a piece of the world. Before books the world was unharmed and perhaps in time it would be whole again. But how could I, unable to read, be a match for them all? There they stood, in such a hopeless bulk even in that modest library. Defiant and desperate I flung myself from book to book and fought my way through the pages like one who has to carry out a task that's too big for him. During that time I read Schiller and Baggesen, Ohlenschlager and Schack-Staf f eldt , whatever I could find by Walter Scott and Calderon. Many a book that came into my hands were ones that, one might say, I should have read already, while for other ones it was still too early; there was almost nothing contemporary. And I read on regardless."