“Is there a more gentle way to go into the night than to follow an endless rope of sentences and then to slip drowsily under the surface of a page into the first tentative flicker of a dream? All late readers know this sinking feeling of falling into the liquid of sleep and then rising again to the call of a voice that you are holding in your hands, as if pulled from the sea back into a boat… Is there is a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?”
– Billy Collins,
from Reading Myself to Sleep