Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.

Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.

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.

It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.

that as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.

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.

The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be.