Милорад Павић :: khazars.com » Autobiography
The first time bombs rained down on me I was twelve. The second time I was fifteen. In between those two bombings I fell in love for the first time and was made to learn German under the German occupation. I also learned English secretly from a gentleman who smoked fragrant pipe tobacco. At the same time I forgot French for the first time I was later to forget it twice more.

Finally, in a kennel where I had sought shelter from the Anglo-American bombing, an emigre Russian imperial officer started teaching me Russian from books of poems by Fet and Tyutchev, the only Russian books he had. Today I think learning languages was a kind of transformation into different bewitching animals.

“The author assures the reader that he will not have to die if he reads this book, as did the user of the 1691 edition, when ‘The Khazar Dictionary’ still had its first scribe.”