“His reading aloud was constantly improving, and histories were more like radio plays. Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with an accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe.”

“One might have to be a little ruthless to seize back control of one's life, don't you think?”

“Asking questions is an art.”

“A surprise visit? That's so romantic...but fairly risky." "If you don't take any risks, life will bass you by," Cunco shipped in.”

“All right," she said. "Give me the books that are kind to me, and to hell with the men who don't give a damn about me.”

“Books aren’t eggs, you know. Simply because a book has aged a bit doesn’t mean it’s gone bad.” There was now an edge to Monsieur Perdu’s voice too. “What is wrong with old? Age isn’t a disease. We all grow old, even books. But are you, is anyone, worth less, or less important, because they’ve been around for longer?”

“I have already lived long enough, Manon had written in late autumn, on an autumn day like today. I have lived and loved, I have had the best of this world. Why cry over the ending? Why cling to what remains? The advantage of dying is that you stop being afraid of it. There is a sense of peacefulness too.”

“Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost.”

“It looked as though [the stars] were breathing to some never-ending slow, deep rhythm. They breathed & watched as the world came & went. ...For them, the earth was one more island world in the immeasurable ocean of outer space, its inhabitants microscopically small”

“When the stars imploded billions of years ago, iron and silver, gold and carbon came raining down. And the iron from that stardust is in us today-in our mitochondria. Mothers pass on the stars and their iron to their children. Who knows, Jean, you and I might be made of the dust from one and the same star, and maybe we recognized each other by its light. We were searching for each other. We are star seekers.”

“...having a child is like casting off your own childhood forever. It's as if it's only then that you really grasp what it means to be a man. You're scared too that all your weaknesses will be laid bare, because fatherhood demands more than you can give.... I always felt I had to earn your love, because I loved you so, so much.”