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“Very prudent and very bourgeois. But you don't win a game by hitting the balls out of court. Why would you say that so many different beliefs have appeared and disappeared throughout history?' 'I don't know. Social, economic, or political factors, I suppose. You're talking to someone who left school at the age of ten. History has never been my strong point.' 'History is biology's dumping ground, Martin.' 'I think I wasn't in school the day that lesson was taught.' 'This lesson is not taught in classrooms, Martin. It is taught through reason and the observation of reality. This lesson is the one nobody wants to learn and is therefore the one we must examine carefully in order to be able to do our work. All business opportunities stem from someone else's inability to resolve a simple and inevitable problem.' 'Are we talking about religion or economics?' 'You choose the label.”

“«Benvenuto nel Cimitero dei Libri Dimenticati, Daniel. ... «Questo luogo è un mistero, Daniel, un santuario. Ogni libro, ogni volume che vedi possiede un'anima, l'anima di chi lo ha scritto e di coloro che lo hanno letto, di chi ha vissuto e di chi ha sognato grazie a esso. Ogni volta che un libro cambia proprietario, ogni volta che un nuovo sguardo ne sfiora le pagine, il suo spirito acquista forza. Molti anni fa, quando mio padre mi portò qui per la prima volta, questo luogo era già vecchio, quasi come la città. Nessuno sa con certezza da quanto tempo esista o chi l'abbia creato. Ti posso solo ripetere quello che mi disse mio padre: quando una biblioteca scompare, quando una libreria chiude i battenti, quando un libro viene cancellato dall'oblio, noi, i custodi di questo luogo, facciamo in modo che arrivi qui. E qui i libri che più nessuno ricorda, i libri perduti nel tempo, vivono per sempre, in attesa del giorno in cui potranno tornare nelle mani di un nuovo lettore, di un nuovo spirito. Noi li vendiamo e li compriamo, ma in realtà i libri non ci appartengono mai. Ognuno di questi libri è stato il miglior amico di qualcuno. Adesso hanno soltanto noi, Daniel. Pensi di poter mantenere il segreto?»”

“I must beg your forgiveness, Father. For years I hated you for leaving me here alone. I told myself you'd got the death you deserved. That's why I never came to see you. Forgive me.' My father never liked tears. He thought a man never cried for others, only for himself. And if he did cry, he was a coward and deserved no pity. I didn't want to cry for my father and betray him yet again. 'I would have liked you to have seen my name in a book, even if you couldn't read it. I would have liked you to have been here with me, to see that your son is managing to get on in life and has been able to do things that you were never allowed to do. I would have likd to have known you, Father, and for you to have known me. I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.”

“Supo entonces que sobre aquella roca empezaría a construir un santuario, un cementerio de ideas e invenciones, de palabras y prodigios que crecería sobre las cenizas [...] y que algún día albergaría la mayor de las bibliotecas, aquella en la que toda obra perseguida o despreciada por la ignorancia y la malicia de los hombres iría a parar a la espera de volver a encontrar al lector que todo libro lleva dentro.”

“I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us.”