“Suddenly the reader's eyes were filled with tears, and a loving voice whispered in his ear: -Why are you crying if everything in that book isn't true?- And the reader replied: -I know; but what I feel is real.”
“Reading is of course dry work, and further refreshment was called for and consumed.”
Source: An Echo in the Bone
“Geschichten sind die Essenz des Lebens, Apolonia", sagte er, so ernst wie immer, und sie hatte das Gefühl, dass es auf der ganzen Welt keinen gescheiteren Menschen gab. "Menschen kommen und gehen. Aber Geschichten überdauern die Zeit, denn sie sind hier in den Büchern, sie sind wie Schätze eingeschlossen und leben ewig. Du, Apolonia, wirst all das hier erben und nach mir die Bücher kaufen, verkaufen und lieben, die die ganze Schönheit der Welt in sich tragen.”
Source: Nocturna - Die Nacht der gestohlenen Schatten
“That's my point: if you own thirty or more books, or you are reading any book at this moment, you may protest all you want, but you were born on the wrong continent.”
Source: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life
“People shock me when they say they never read. When I was young, if people didn't read they would never admit it. Now, its quite acceptable to be anti-intellectual.”
“Desejava uma verdadeira livraria tal como um viciado deseja uma dose. Não havia mesmo nada melhor do que aquele maravilhoso cheiro a livros novos, tocar nas capas e folhear um livro, cujas páginas, se calhar, nunca tinham sido folheadas.
(...)
Há pessoas obececadas e apaixonadas por sapatos. Os sapatos eram bonitos, mas não se podia ficar a noite toda acordade a ler um par, pois não?”
Source: An Offer You Can't Refuse
“All memory is individual, unreproducible - it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.”
Source: Regarding the Pain of Others
“Do not shift your focus from victory, no matter what the enemy throws on the path to destiny.”
Source: A Manual for Victory
“Love the great narcotic was the revealer in the alchemist's bottle rendering visible the most untraceable substances.
Love the great narcotic was the agent provocateur exposing all the secret selves to daylight.”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel
“When you're in my arms, I know you're mine. But your feet are so swift, so swift, they carry you as lightly as wings, I never know where, too fast, too fast away from me.”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel