“It is often much harder to get rid of books than to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again. While they are still there, it is part of us.”

“To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.”

“I fuck with every book, and if I don’t leave a mark, there’s no orgasm.”

“For me the greatest joy is to be able to submerge myself for a few hours every day in a human time that otherwise would be alien to me. A lifetime is not enough.”

“Os livros mudam o destino das pessoas”

“Ninguém quer extraviar um livro. Preferimos perder um anel, um relógio, o chapéu-de-chuva, do que o livro cujas páginas não mais leremos mas que conservam, na sonoridade do seu título, uma antiga e talvez perdida emoção.”

“Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives.”