‘Baudolino sensed that he could discipline the throbbing of his heart by writing down on paper what he felt, and so much the worse if the object of his love would be deprived of these treasures of tenderness …’

“The star illuminates the pole, and the moon colors the night. But my guide is a sole star and if, when the shadows have been dispelled, my star rises from the East, my mind will ignore the shadows of sorrow. You are my radiant star, who will dispel the night, and light itself without you is night, whereas with you night is splendid radiance.”

“If I feel hunger, only you sate me; if I feel thirst, only you quench it. But what am I saying? You refresh, but do not satiate. Never have I been sated with you, nor shall I ever be ….”

“So great is your sweetness, so wondrous your constancy, so ineffable the tone of your voice, such the beauty and the grace that crown you, that it would be a great offense to attempt to express them in words. May the fire that consumes us grow always, and with new fuel, and the more it remains hidden, the more it will flare up and deceive the envious and the treacherous, so that the question will ever remain: which of us two loves the more, and so between us there will always be joined a beautiful duel in which both are victorious….”

Baudolino (p79), Umberto Eco.