“If a book falls open in a library and no one sees it, is it still writing? Or is it simply a page bearing abstract markings?”

“She had her head in a book. Like me she preferred reading about travel to actually traveling; it was so much more comfortable.”

“Travel broadens the mind. Travel shrinks the wallet. Travel shrivels the testicles.”

“Some travel to find themselves—I was travelling to get lost.”

“Italics are like a rash -- you never know whether to ignore them entirely or whether the more you attention you give the more they spread.”

“I had once read, in one of those pre-plague books in the library, that love was bearing witness. That it was the act of watching someone's life, of simply being there to say: you're life is worth seeing.”

“The colonists had no library at their disposal; but the engineer was a book which was always at hand, always open at the page which one wanted, a book which answered all their questions, and which they often consulted.”