What’s the opposite of déjà vu, when you see something that hasn’t happened yet?” “I don’t know—avant verrais?

...the landscape inside Lord of the Rings was so stunning and so stupendous that it could be absorbed as a form of nourishment.

Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.

Do I have to talk to insane people?" "You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.

A good butler should save his employer's life at least once a day.

The safest course was actually the simplest-do nothing at all and hope everything turned out for the best. It wasn't a great plan, but it had the benefits of simplicity and a long tradition.

…Tell me, has anything odd happened to you recently? What do you mean, odd?' Unusual. Deviating from the customary. Something outside the usual parameters of normalcy. An occurrence of unprecedented weird.