Zoe

“It's a dangerous business going out of your front door...there's no telling where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“Queenie Hennessy - "I am here to die."
Sister Mary Inconnue - "Pardon me but you are here to live until you die. There is a significant difference.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

“And blow me down if he didn’t see, on the path right in front of him, a hoopoe.

… but the first time I saw one in Africa, I had much the same feeling as Mr Malik was having now. It was one of happy elation. There is something about the shape of the bird, with its long curved beak and clown’s crest, and the colour of the bird, with its bright russet plumage speckled with bands of black and white - there is even something about the very name of the bird - that just cheers you up. Forget the bluebird of happiness, give me a hoopoe every time.”
― Nicholas Drayson, A Guide to the Birds of East Africa

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind