“When I went into a movie house to see something made by one of these great men, I felt that the half-darkness, the tunnel-like auditorium, spoke of that world of phantasmagoria and dream grotto of which I was aware as a part of my own life, which I could touch only in dreams or waking reverie. But film could open the door to it, for me; film therefore had a place in my life that I had never tried to define, for fear that too much definition might injure the fabric of the dreams.”

—Robertson Davies, Murther and Walking Spirits.

Substitute “novels” for “film” and you would lose nothing, and the movie house in this passage also functions as an excellent metaphor for writing, with the feeling of being aware of part of life that can only be touched in dreams of waking reverie of creation.