"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 memories and our desires, are never lost."
"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 legends,myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values , and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society."
"Justice is an affectation of perspective, not a universal value."
"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 the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows."
"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."
"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 -- if possible, a deaf one."
"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 is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality."
"You don't look well," he pronounced."Indigestion," I replied."From what?""Reality.""Join the queue."
"I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn't stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn't notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there."
"Every self-respecting act of persuasion must find appeal to curiosity, then to vanity, and lastly to kindness or remorse. Isabella looked down and slowly nodded."
"Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away."
"Man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other prupose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species."
"Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute."
"The day I charge an unbeliever like you for the word of God will be the day I'm struck dead by lightning, and with good reason."
"Its impossible to initiate a rational dialogue with some one about beliefs and concepts if he has not acquired them through reason. It doesn't matter whether we are looking at God, race, or national pride."
"History is biology's dumping ground"
"A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyze it and judge how to channel it."