Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big. - Umberto Eco

Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.

What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.

And don't succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord's torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.'

'Master!' I said, shocked.

'So it is, Adso. And there are ever richer treasuries. Some time ago, in the cathedral of Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve.'

'Really?' I exclaimed, amazed. Then, siezed by doubt, I added, 'But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!'

'The other skull must be in another treasury,' William said, with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting.