“I was always going to the bookcase for another sip of the divine specific.”

“Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.”

“If I knew I was going to die at a specific moment in the future, it would be nice to be able to control what song I was listening to; this is why I always bring my iPod on airplanes.”

“At home these men’s works [ Kant, Schiller, Goethe] were kept in the bookcase with the green glass panes in Papa’s study, and Törless knew this bookcase was never opened except to display its contents to a visitor. It was like the shrine of some divinity to which one does not readily draw nigh and which one venerates only because one is glad that thanks to its existence there are certain things one need no longer bother about.”

“I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.”

“A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then it’s time to go.
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.
They’re saving me a seat.”

“Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.”

“I haven't had a sip of alcohol since 1986.”

“The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.”

“so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another”