Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.

It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face.

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.

Memories are worse than bullets.

I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.

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

Well, this is a story about books." About books?" About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind." You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel." That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.