"I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude."

Source: Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2009). “The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1845-1846”, p.54, The Floating Press