“Orphan could no longer hear or see the shadows of the dead. He didn't think they had perished. Most likely they were hiding now, somewhere in this landscape of books.”

“They were all machines, he thought, just like La Mettrie had said in L'Homme Machine all those years ago. So he, Orphan, was a machine of flesh and blood, and Lucy, now, was made of something else, more complex perhaps- but they were the same and...They were in love.Sometimes that was enough.”

“For one crazy moment he had the notion of a vanished tribe of librarians, lost in the deep underground caverns of the Bodleian, a wild and savage tribe that fed on unwary travellers.”

“Clocks are the enemies of time... they are the gaolers of day and the turnkeys of night."Tom Thumb”

“Life is not always deep, mostly it's just random. But it’s different in art. In art you can choose to show some things and hide others. And suddenly there's meaning to find in the chaos.”

“Always near, but never there...”

“Mosca had preferred it when she could hear the edge in her companion’s voice. Now she felt like someone who knows that there is a scorpion somewhere in the room but can’t see where it is.”