“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”

“..One has to be a mindless barbarian to burn such beauty in a stove, to destroy what we can not create..”

“The savagery of the picture strange and alluring, Frank smeared with blood and absolutely at ease. Barbarian, primitive, visceral; if Tony had been given to myth-making, he would have wondered if there could be any more frightening god than one who was simultaneously provider and destroyer.”

“How DARE you and the rest of your barbarians set fire to my library? Play conqueror all you want, Mighty Caesar! Rape, murder, pillage thousands, even millions of human beings! But neither you nor any other barbarian has the right to destroy one human thought!”

“I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something by nature we call it progress.”

“A Mark that spoke of loss was still a Mark, a remembrance. You could not lose something you never had.”