“And how could anyone consent to give up the smell of open books, old or new?”

“This time I felt my own face redden. Talking with this woman was like sitting still for a series of slaps, delivered arhythmically so you couldn't know when the next one was coming.”

“I like a puzzle, as you know. So does every scholar worth his salt. It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me'.”

“As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination.”

“If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.”

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

“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 undeniable joy.”

“To you, perceptive reader, I bequeath my history.”

“... I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad.”

“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 inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.”

“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 comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.”