We were interrupted by a girl with a strawberry birthmark on her nose; she had some papers in her hand and asked if we had signed the petition for the imprisoned Argentinean comrades. Belbo signed wit...
We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.
True,' I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or devine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spok...
They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its...
There are secrets that kill. But
There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.
The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven...
The year had begun with the first protests in Milan against the Austrians, where citizens had stopped smoking to damage the revenues of the imperial government (those Milanese comrades, who stood firm...
The thing whose address I lost is not the End, it’s the Beginning. Not the object to be possessed but the subject that possesses me. Misery
The library is testimony to truth and to error,
The conspiracy theory of society . . . comes from abandoning God and then asking: Who is in his place? —Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge,
Superstition brings bad luck. —Raymond Smullyan, 5000 B.C., 1.3.8
Machines, he said, are an effect of art, which is nature’s ape, and they reproduce not its forms but the operation itself.
Lampedusa, Bassani y Cassola. Por mi parte, hoy
Juan XXIII y Benigno Zaccagnini hacían simplemente lo que se esperaba de ellos, y no hay razón para que hubiera que felicitarlos por eso.
Je récapitule. Entrez dans une salle de ciné : si pour aller de A à B, les protagonistes mettent plus de temps que vous ne le souhaiteriez, alors c'est un film porno.
It takes a little time, but the pleasures of cooking begin before the pleasures of the palate, and preparing means anticipating ...
Impassioned in his gesticulation, his voice persuasive, his smile fascinating, his reasoning clear and consequential, he held his listeners fast for all the time he spoke. He
I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers where you just repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation' and 'To conclude'.
I could write the political history of those years based on how Red Label gradually gave way to twelve-year-old Ballantine and then to single malt.