1
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 intertwined again, it is as if English were bathing itself in the fountain of its own youth, and as if French were remembering the buried treasures it had thought forgotten.JeanChristophe Valtat
2
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?' Vassily nodded. 'Thank God we have other addictions to assuage it a little.JeanChristophe Valtat
3
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.JeanChristophe Valtat
4
... 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...JeanChristophe Valtat