The books that you really love give the sense, when you first open them, of having been there. It is a creation, almost like a chamber in the memory. Places that one has never been to, things that one has never seen or heard, but their fitness is so sound that you’ve been there somehow.
“Three immense forces, Heilbroner contends, transformed the Distant Past into Yesterday — science, capitalism and the revolutionary belief that people might become masters of their own fates. For the first time, mankind saw the future as a beckoning prospect. The growth of technology and science, in particular, rapidly transformed the world for the better — a process that everyone assumed would stretch forever into the future.”
J. G. Ballard | “Anything Could Happen”