he looked around at the books on the walls, at their dark, worn spines, and he seemed to hear a strange, distant murmur coming from them. each of the closed books was a door, and behind it stirred shadows, voices, sounds, heading toward him from a deep, dark place.

The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences, not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman.

Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore.

Because God and the devil could be one and the same thing, and everybody understood it in his own way.

One is never alone with a book nearby, don't you agree? Every page reminds us of a day that has passed and makes us relive the emotions that filled it. Happy hours underlined in red pencil, dark ones in black.

Later, with time, I learned that although all men are capable of good and evil, the worst among them are those who, when they commit evil, do so by shielding themselves in the authority of others, in their subordination, or in the excuse of following orders. And even worse are those who believe they are justified by their God.

You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations.