He lost himself in the words and images conjured in his mind and for a while forgot ... He found himself flying among stars and planets.

Time curses all, I thought, except the truth.

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

The truth is what hurts

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.

A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from.

He would have liked to know that somebody wanted to keep him alive, that someone remembered him. He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.