I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.

One is never wholly conscious of the greed hidden in one's heart until one hears the sweet sound of silver.

It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.

And here I was thinking you were a bit slow, what with so much asking and not knowing anything.

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

That's what happens when people reach old age; nobody remembers they've been bastards too.

Julian once wrote that coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires.