“You really love to gossip, don't you?” he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine.“Yes, I suppose I do,” she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. “You think that's why I love reading novels so much?”

“I never wanted to be rich or successful or famous. I just wanted to be happy and have fun.”

“And I don't want to live anywhere where I am famous. It makes me very, very uncomfortable, because it conveys an advantage over people, and I don't like that.”

“She became his Ariadne, leading him through the labyrinth of books, stopping now and then to pass another one to him.”

“Most people — however much they might deny it — had an idea of what they were getting into when they got into it.”

“Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her.”

“Perception of personal danger very often set people on the path of virtue.”

“We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them....Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important.”

“Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will”

“I raised my hand and asked if God was a spirit. And he said yes, He was. So I asked if it was right that a spirit was different from a person because it didn't have a body, wasn't material. And when he agreed, I asked how, if God was a spirit, He could be a man, if He didn't have a body or anything.”

“You really love to gossip, don't you?” he asked, wishing she had brought him a glass of wine.“Yes, I suppose I do,” she answered, sounding surprised at the realization. “You think that's why I love reading novels so much?”