I felt like poisoning a monk.

If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.

To establish what is true is very difficult. Frequently it is easier to establish what is false. And, passing through the false, it's possible to understand something about truth.

But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.

An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?