“He was not oppressed by a crowd because in the midst of all the hullabaloo he always found a quiet place for his soul. ”

“He knew that her body was his to engage in all the acrobatics he had learned in the books he kept hidden in a corner of his library, but with Clara even the most abominable contortions were like the thrashings of a newborn; it was impossible to spice them up with the salt of evil or the pepper of submission.”

“His lifetime was less than a fraction of a second in infinity. Or maybe he did not even exist; maybe human beings, the planets, everything in Creation were a dream...an illusion. He smiled with humility when he remembered...”

“He understood then that all his exploits as a reporter, the feats that had won him such recognition and fame, were merely an attempt to keep his most ancient fears at bay, a stratagem for taking refuge behind a lens to test whether reality was more tolerable from that perspective.”

“She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she'd been born with it or baptized it, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of 'beauty' and 'twilight' and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words.”

“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”

“Captain John Sommers joined his brother and sister in the library, "Do you remember Jacob Todd?-The cad who defrauded us with that yarn about missions in Tierra del Fuego? asked Jeremy Sommers.-The same... He changed his name. Now he calls himself Jacob Freemont, and he's a newspaperman in San Francisco.-Egad! So it is true that in the United States any scoundrel may begin a new life?-Jacob Todd paid for his offense several times over. I think it is splendid that there is a country where a man can have a second chance.”