In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.

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

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.

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.

While you're working, you don't have to look life in the eye.

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