These atheist cultures were certainly diligent in preserving the relics of their saints.

Then you must say to her, 'Madame, I observe that your heart is broken. Allow me to repair it for you.

It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.

In the end, I always act from the heart, even if I also value reason and tradition. I wish I could explain why, but I don't know.

My guess is that he remembers some of me, some of us together, and the rest rolled off him like topsoil in a flash flood.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.