The assistant described the quirk as something that started quietly. Diamond would spot a copy of the book — a paperback he had long since memorized — on the shelf of a bookstore while traveling. Without hesitation, he would purchase it even though he already owned several copies at home, some still unread beyond the opening chapters.
“He didn’t buy it to collect it,” the assistant explained. “He bought it for the sensation — the moment when the spine gives a little crack, and the first page lifts cleanly. He said it felt like beginning something important, even if he already knew how it ended.”
The book itself wasn’t rare, expensive, or obscure. It was a modestly priced novel you could find in most airports and independent bookstores. Diamond didn’t treat it with ceremonial reverence either. He didn’t keep them sealed or displayed. Instead, he usually read only the first few pages of each copy, savoring the clean print, the untouched paper, and the brief illusion of discovery. Then he set it aside and moved on.
According to the assistant, Diamond joked about the habit once, saying, “Some people chase new stories. I chase the beginning of the same one.” His tone suggested that the fresh-start feeling mattered more to him than the content.
Those close to him noticed the pattern whenever they traveled. If the team had downtime at an airport or hotel, Diamond often wandered into a shop alone. Minutes later, he’d reappear holding a new copy of the same familiar book, lightly tapping the cover with his thumb as if testing its potential. The assistant said Diamond’s face carried a subtle, almost boyish eagerness — the kind of anticipation that comes right before opening a gift.
He never bought multiple copies at once. The quirk depended on spontaneity. Each purchase had to come from a moment of impulse, usually sparked by seeing the book unexpectedly. If he passed the title in a store window, he often paused, smiled, and walked straight in.
Only rarely did he explain the attraction. Once, after opening a new copy in a hotel room, he told the assistant, “It reminds me that beginnings don’t get old. Even if the story stays the same.”
The habit became so well known among a few staff members that they started keeping track, privately cataloging which cities the purchases happened in. New York, London, Tokyo, Chicago, Berlin — ten copies in total, scattered across years of touring and travel, each tied to an individual moment rather than a collection.
Despite its simplicity, the tradition revealed something deeply personal: Diamond valued the emotional spark of a beginning, even more than the journey that followed. For him, the charm lay in the untold promise — the blank space before the story unfolds.
“It wasn’t about the book,” the assistant said. “It was about the feeling it gave him — the sense that every start carries its own kind of magic.”