Someone asked about romantic, Valentine's Day books; this is from one of mine. Actually, it's the only one I could think of.

I excised the quotes to remove the temptation of getting bogged down in the details. I respect the wisdom in the writings. But, I'd rather show what his reading symbolizes, that he's inspired, without dwelling on the particular philosophy in the writings.

You can read it all here. Search on "brimstone" ... that's how I found it:

And for some reason he had an unfolded white handkerchief draped over his head, possibly to ward off rain, or hail, or brimstone.

He went directly across the hall and into the room his two eldest brothers had shared.

This was the first time in almost seven years that Zooey had, in the ready-made dramatic idiom, "set foot" in Seymour's and Buddy's old room.

He turned around, not abruptly, and walked over and sat down at his brother Seymour's desk-- pulling out the little straight chair as though it were something he did every day. He placed his cigar on the right-hand edge of the desk, bum-ing end out, leaned forward on his elbows, and covered his face with his hands.

With his face in his hands and his handkerchief headgear drooping low over his brow, Zooey sat at Seymour's old desk, inert, but not asleep, for a good twenty minutes. Then, almost in one movement, he removed the support for his face, picked up his cigar, stowed it in his mouth, opened the left-hand bottom drawer of the desk, and took out, using both hands, a seven- or eight-inch-thick stack of what appeared to be--and were--shirt cardboards. He placed the stack before him on the desk and began to turn the cards over, two or three at a time. His hand stayed only once, really, and then quite briefly.

There Zooey quit reading. He gave the stack of cardboards a solid-sounding double tap on the desk surface, as one taps a deck of cards, then dropped the stack back into the bottom drawer and closed the drawer.

Once again he leaned forward on his elbows and buried his face in his hands. This time he sat motionless for almost a half hour.

When he moved again, it was as though marionette strings had been attached to him and given an overzealous yank. He appeared to be given just enough time to pick up his cigar before another jerk of the invisible strings swung him over to the chair at the second desk in the room--Buddy's desk--where the phone was.

In this new seating arrangement, the first thing he did was to pull his shirt ends out of his trousers. He unbuttoned the shirt completely, as if the journey of three steps had taken him into an oddly tropical zone. Next, he took his cigar out of his mouth, but transferred it to his left hand and kept it there. With his right hand he took his handkerchief off his head and laid it beside the phone, in what was very implicitly a "ready position." He then picked up the phone without any perceptible hesitation and dialled a local number. A very local number indeed.