“The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends, and guarded him.”

“He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him – he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.”

“One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse.”

“Blessed is he who can call his family friends and his friends family.”

“If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends. ”

“I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief”