Amusement and annoyance are, perhaps, both forms of denial.

The life-changing encounters that John Quincy Adams made as an adolescent on his own in Stockholm began with a friendship he struck up at a bookstore.

The world shall retire from me before I shall retire from the world. John Quincy Adams

The aging Adams delightedly describes being surrounded by books on so many different subjects that interested him as "baits on fishhooks".