"It was the French of the Normans that, grafting itself onto the barbaric Saxon tongue, gave it its most magnificent blossoming. And, in these new countries, where both English and French are intertwin..."
- Jean-Christophe Valtat
"Clusters of distant lights was the view of Mankind that he liked the best. The lights had the archaic charm of little fires on a plain, and the frailty about them, if it did not excuse anything, at le..."
"Vassily cleared his throat, probably impatient with Gabriel's bookshelf manners. 'You'll have to excuse me,' Gabriel said, putting back the booklet, 'I have a severe addiction to ink.''Don't we all?' ..."
"When in doubt, do what they do in books, was one of Gabriel's secret mottos and - that rarest of things - a principle that he actually lived by."
"... Paris was no more Babylon than it was New Jerusalem. All cities worthy of that name were both: they were one because they were the other..."