To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music

A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.

I hoped my absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren't happy and never will be.

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.