“There must be a secret hidden in this book or else you wouldn't bother to read it”

“Everytime you read, you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”

“A novel is a book with a lot of pages.”

“Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you're someone else.”

“I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.”

“Sometimes I forget this insoluble mess and dream: he’ll save me, we’ll travel; we’ll hunt in the deserts, we’ll sleep on the pavements of strange cities, carelessly, without his guilt, without my pain. Or else I’m going to wake up and all the human laws and customs of this world will have changed—thanks to some magical power—or this world, without changing, will let me feel desire and be happy and carefree.What did I want from him who hurt me more than I thought it was possible for two people to hurt each other? I wanted the adventures found in kids’ books. He couldn’t give me these because he wasn’t able to. Whatever did he want from me? I never understood. He told me he was just average: average regrets, average hopes. What do I care about all that average shit that has nothing to do with adventure?”

“TODAY I THINK MY RELATIONSHIP WITH HELL IS OVER. It was hell, the ancient hell. Hell: I believed that if I loved V enough, we would love each other.All I know is that I’ve been returned to earth violently; I’ve a duty to myself to survive and to see what is. I have to deal with the truth, with nothing else.Did V’s charity to me almost cause my death?I, starving, fed on the dream that V loved me and I lived a lie. So forgive me, You who knows that only truth matters.Yes—this dawn is at best difficult.The blood he let out of my skin, now dried and stiff, hurts me and there’s nothing else in my life but memories of him. Mental war is constant.Nonetheless, this is the eve before the morning.May I accept the influxes of vigor and whatever real tenderness floats by in these barren waters. And when dawn comes, armed with my patience which burns, I shall see the cities of humans which are splendid.The imagination is nothing unless it is made actual.”