Weren’t all books ultimately related? After all, the same letters filled them, just arranged in a different order. Which meant that, in a certain way, every book was contained in every other!

Where did the love come from? What was it made of?

Sometimes Dustfinger thought Basta's constant fear of curses and sudden disaster probably arose from his terror of the darkness within himself, which made him assume that the rest of the world must be exactly the same.

From the tower battlements, Dustfinger looked down on a lake as black as night, where the reflection of the castle swam in a sea of stars. The wind passing over his unscarred face was cold from the snow of the surrounding mountains, and Dustfinger relished life as if he were tasting it for the first time. The longing it brought, and the desire. All the bitterness, all the sweetness, even if it was only for a while, never for more than a while, everything gained and lost, lost and found again.

It was much easier for him now that he was smaller to negotiate his way through his crammed shop but he still tried to swagger past the shelves like he used to in the past. The attempt looked so strange that Scipio started to mimic him behind his back. "What's the silly giggling about?" Barbarossa asked when Prosper and Renzo bust out laughing.

This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends.

Mortimer's face twisted when the Piper pressed his knife against his ribs. Oh yes, he's obviously made the wrong enemies in this story, thought Orpheus. And the wrong friends. But that was high-minded heroes for you. Stupid.