“For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.”

“For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.”

“Jacopo Belbo didn't understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself. ”

“I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, butwe don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.”

“You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that’s abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don’t love someone for your whole life - that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends … But you can hate someone for your whole life - provided he’s always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart.”

“...a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth.”

“recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to us like a great book...”