This, perhaps, is how lives are measured, a series of abandonments that we hope beyond reason will eventually be reconciled. - Anthony Doerr

Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it.

But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.

Do you know what happens, Etienne,” says Madame Manec from the other side of the kitchen, “when you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water?” “You will tell us, I am sure.” “It jumps out. But do you know what happens when you put the frog in a pot of cool water and then slowly bring it to a boil? You know what happens then?” Marie-Laure waits. The potatoes steam. Madame Manec says, “The frog cooks.