Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny.

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.

Where he had failed, I would triumph. Where he had lost his way, I would find the path out of the labyrinth.

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.