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IT HAS BEEN SAID that books find their own readers—but sometimes they need someone to show them the way.
“I’m so glad there are books in the world,” she said. “I hope that’s one thing that never changes! So
He never watched the news, never listened to the radio, never read a newspaper. He would have been the first to admit that he had lost touch with the world.
A pretty person who doesn’t smile looks arrogant, so she smiled all day.
Carl made a point of never lying. Send a lie out into the world, and you can never retrieve it.
Now he lived with his paper family, kept in cabinets behind frosted glass doors
Sometimes it seemed to Carl that each word was a cell of his own body; it was at that point he knew that with the years of reading he had absorbed them into himself.
when asked a question, Carl always replied with a response as honest as it was appropriate.
“I’m like a clock hand. You might think the hand is unhappy, always covering the same ground, always returning to where it started, but the opposite is true. It appreciates the certainty of its path and destination, the security that it cannot go in the wrong direction, that it will always be useful and precise.”
“You’ve got a funny laugh,” said Schascha, “like you don’t quite know how.”
Whatever ingenious arguments she presented for accompanying Carl, he always had a better counterargument. So she would say nothing, and simply tag along.
Within each book lies a heart that begins to beat when someone reads it, because it makes a connection with the reader.”
“Those books which lie closest to our hearts are precisely the books we should give away, so that they may bring others happiness.”
That’s why you don’t know what to say. Because you’ve got two voices in your head, and you’ve no idea which one is right.
“I have to get going,” said Carl, setting off with a shake of his head. “The other books in my backpack need to go to their people.” “What about me?” asked Schascha. “I don’t know how to get home from here!” Carl stopped. “Did that come to you in the long hallway as well?” Schascha nodded proudly. “Just in case the other reasons weren’t enough.”
“Of course, he’s God, he doesn’t have to keep to his own rules.”
and as long as a thing was not articulated clearly, there was room for interpretation, which it would be wrong not to exploit.
“Reading a lot doesn’t make you an intellectual, any more than eating a lot makes you a gourmet. I’m an egotist, reading purely for my own pleasure, out of love for good stories, not to learn something about the world.”
I’m contractually obliged to be fond of her.”
“Who’s funnier? The funny old man, or the girl keeping the funny old man company?” “The funny old man, of course!”
“Books are much, much more dangerous than ice cream! They hurt your head. Or worse, your heart.”
“You see, there is no book that can please everyone. And if there were, it would be a bad book. You can’t be everyone’s friend, because everyone is different. You’d have to be completely lacking in personality, no rough edges or sharp corners. But even then, many people wouldn’t like you, because they need rough edges and sharp corners. Do you understand? Every person needs different books. Because what one person loves with all their heart, might leave another completely cold.”
He still loved Effi, but he loved hitting her even more.
no one could take happiness with them either, but nor could anyone have too much happiness in life.
Even the sight of Schascha in her yellow winter coat, looking like a sun on two legs under the overcast sky, did nothing to lighten his mood.
Even when an extraordinary book ends at precisely the right point, with precisely the right words, and anything further would only destroy that perfection, it still leaves us wanting more pages. That is the paradox of reading.
As he shut his door, fear grasped hold of him like a giant hand, shaking his whole body from head to toe, hurling every last spark of happiness out of him.
Belief took a lot of effort—every day, given that real life had a tendency to contradict belief.
