42 quotes found
“History is biology's dumping ground”
“We all give up great expectations along the way.”
“Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.”
“Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.”
“You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.”
“It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.”
“I can't die yet, doctor. Not yet. I have things to do. Afterwords I'll have a whole lifetime in which to die.”
“It is a part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means, be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the cert...”
“Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and ...”
“Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them, and to making sure their pages, like our me...”
“Do you know what religion is, Martin, my friend?-I can barely remember Lord's Prayer.-A beautiful and well-crafted prayer. Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through ...”
“As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in th...”
“To Senor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them.”
“Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”
“I was no longer able to hear the music that issues from a decent piece of prose.”
“Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.”
“I don't suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I don't trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It's a sure sign that they don't really know anyone.”
“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”
“Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.”
“I discovered that seventeen-year-old girls have such huge verbal energy that their brain drives them to expend it every twenty seconds. On the third day I decided I had to find her a boyfriend -- i...”
“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”
“He was waiting for me at the best table in the room, toying with a glass of white wine and listening to the pianist who was playing a piece by Granados with velvet fingers.”
“-Do you think it's dirty money?-All money is dirty. If it were clean nobody would want it.”
“It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you ma...”
