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The latter wanted to talk about the murder; Lönnrot preferred to discuss the diverse names of God; the journalist declared, in three columns, that the investigator Erik Lönnrot, had dedicated himself to studying the names of God in order to come across the name of the murderer.

[from Death and the Compass]

In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.

[from On Exactitude in Science]

This circle was a temple, long ago devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men. The stranger stretched out beneath the pedestal. He was awakened by the sun high above. He evidenced without astonishment that his wounds had closed; he shut his pale eyes and slept, not out of bodily weakness but out of determination of will.

[from The Circular Ruins]

Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized that the book was monstrous. It was cold consolation to think that I, who looked upon it with my eyes and fondled it with my ten flesh-and-bone fingers, was no less monstrous than the book.
[from The Book of Sand]

Madden's presence in Viktor Runeberg's apartment meant the end of our anxieties and - but this seemed, or should have seemed, very secondary to me - also the end of our lives. It meant that Runeberg had been arrested or murdered. Before the sun set on that day, I would encounter the same fate.
[from The Garden of Forking Paths]