“Ao sairmos para o anoitecer dourado das ruas bizantinas, refleti como era estranho que, mesmo sob as circunstncias mais extraordinrias, durante episdios mais perturbadores da vida, nos lugares mais...”

“Recently abandoned women can be complicated.”

“Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of...”

“It was strange, I reflected.. that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one's life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undenia...”

“It touched me to be trusted with something terrible.”

“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 inexora...”

“Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.”

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,And all the sweet serenity of books”

“my first recommendation to people in charge of science education is, more money for public libraries and museums. Public libraries and museums ought to be as common as schools.”

“Society was the only threat to the sanctity of selfhood: an unpatroned library was an orderly library.”

“If the library in the morning suggests an echo of the severe and reasonable wishful order of the world, the library at night seems to rejoice in the world's essential, joyful muddle. ”