Baudolino

What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagining other worlds,’ he said, ‘to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn’t yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

The good thing about the studium is the that you learn from your teachers, true, but even more from your fellows, especially those older than you, when they tell you what they have read, and you discover that the world must be full of wondrous things and to know them all - since a lifetime will not be a enough for you to travel through the whole world - you can only read all the books.

and I said to him when you learn to read then you learn everything you didnt know before. But when you write you write only what you know allready so patientia Im better off not knowing how to write because the ass is the ass

And so it was that the Poet, through an excess of theological refinement, was unable to satisfy his coarse carnal passion.