We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

Disarmed, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you've deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.

I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn't stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn't notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there.

It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.

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.

It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for human beings. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.

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.