My Brilliant Friend on Don Quixote: “Too many bad gallant novels, Lenù, make a Don Quixote; but here in Naples we, with all due respect to Don Quixote, have no need to tilt against windmills.”
My Brilliant Friend on Iliad: “he resembled Hector as he was depicted in the school copy of the Iliad.”
My Brilliant Friend on The Betrothed: “when I tried to talk to him about The Betrothed, or the marvelous books I still borrowed from Maestro Ferraro's library...”
My Brilliant Friend on War and Peace: “But meanwhile I saw that under War and Peace, and bearing the label of Maestro Ferraro's library, a tattered volume was sticking out.”
My Brilliant Friend on Bruges-la-Morte: “"Bruges-la-Morte." "Are there ghosts?" "I don't know." "May I come along when you give it to him?"”
The Days of Abandonment on Anna Karenina: “That night, when Mario left, I read again the pages in which Anna Karenina goes toward her death, leafed through the ones about women destroyed.”
The Lying Life of Adults on Tom Jones: “...none of my classmates had ever wanted me to recount—just to give an example—the plot of Tom Jones.”