Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.

A here exists only in relation to a there, not the other way around. There's this only because there's that; if we don't look up, we'll never know what's down. Think of it, boy. We find ourselves only by looking what we're not. You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.

Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you musn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it.

I was born just after the end of World War II, and with my friends in our little suburban backyards in New Jersey, we used to play war a lot. I don't know if boys still play war, they probably do, but we were thrusting ourselves into recent history and we were always fighting either the Nazis or the Japanese.

Just think it, and chances are it will happen.

You find the book in the process of doing it. That's the adventure of the job.

Eighteen is a terrible age, and while I walked around with the conviction that I was somehow more grown-up than my classmates, the truth was that I had merely found a different way of being young.