The Little Virtues - Google Book Search
Natalia Ginzburg Arcade Publishing ca-print-arcade_publishing 1989
... to me) impressions and cadences rise to the surface, is a sad, barren place. ...

He has made and education of it for himself and he does this with whatever attracts his curiosity; I don't know how to make myself and education out of anything, even those things that I love best in life; they stay with me as scattered images, nourishing my life with memories and emotions but without filling the void, the desert of my education.
He tells me I have no curiosity, but this is not true. I am curious about a few, a very few, things. And when I have got to know them I retain scattered impressions of them, or the cadence of a phrase, or a word. But my world, in which these completely unrelated (unless in some secret fashion unbeknown to me) impressions and cadences rise to the surface, is a sad, barren place. His world, on the other hand, is green and populous and richly cultivated; it is a fertile, well-watered countryside in which woods, meadows, orchards, and villages flourish.