I started off for home, where I planned to recruit a good book and hide away from the world.

As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn’t help thinking that if I, by pure chance. had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain...

Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.

Friends?””Till death us do part.

Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist’s life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one’s limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

Don’t be bashful; we’re among gentlemen. It’s a known fact that we men are the missing link between the pirate and the pig.

Few things are more deceptive than memories.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

As he took them in his arms, the crying of the babies permeated the night like a trail of blood calling out to a predator.

Si algún día tiene usted una hija, bendición que no se la deseo yo a nadie, porque es ley de vida que tarde o temprano le romperá a uno el corazón, en fin, a lo que iba, que si algún día tiene usted una hija empezará sin darse cuenta a dividir a los hombres en...

All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake.

I couldn’t help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of...

[H]e lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years.

Jorge siempre viviría a la sombra de su privilegio, entre algodones y fracasos. Penélope, la preciosa Penélope, era mujer y por tanto tesoro, no tesorero. Julián, que tenía alma de poeta, y por tanto de asesino, reunía las cualidades.

But if you like, you can come share a tasty meal of bread, raisins, and fresh Burgos cheese. With that, and The Count of Monte Cristo, anyone can live to a hundred.

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

1I smiled bitterly, a defeated man pitifully begging a God in whom he had never trusted.

Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people...

Ein Geheimnis ist soviel wert wie der der es uns anvertraut.

History is biology’s dumping ground

—Alguien dijo una vez que en el momento en que te paras a pensar si quieres a alguien, ya has dejado de quererle para siempre —dije.

En aquellos días aprendí que nada da más miedo que un héroe que vive para contarlo, para contar lo que todos los que cayeron a su lado no podrán contar jamás.

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

Its impossible to initiate a rational dialogue with some one about beliefs and concepts if he has not acquired them through reason. It doesn’t matter whether we are looking at God, race, or national pride.

Human beings believe just as they breathe – in order to survive.

A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn’t go away.

I always had this childhood image in the back of my mind of this fantastic place where all the things I liked came from; Orson Welles, jazz, all that stuff. Los Angeles is one of those places where somebodies become nobodies and nobodies become somebody.

With ‘The Angel’s Game’, there was a lot of pressure from the expectations – expectations from the book industry and from readers; it’s natural.

I’m fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There’s something about that period that’s epic and tragic.

There are two things that I cannot live without: music and books. Caffeine isn’t dignified enough to qualify.

When ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ became a success I had already been a working writer, I’d been through the ups and downs, I’d seen how it worked.

The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it’s a woman who’s extremely vain.

Right then, in a nutshell: this one hasn’t a single bone of obedient-little-wife material in her heavenly body.”Hasn’t she? Then what kind of bone does your expertise detect?’Fermin came closer, adopting a confidential tone. ‘The passionate kind,’ he said, raising his eyebrows with an air of mystery. ‘And you can be sure I mean that...

To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

Every self-respecting act of persuasion must find appeal to curiosity, then to vanity, and lastly to kindness or remorse. Isabella looked down and slowly nodded.

An intellectual is some one who isn’t exactly distinguished by his intellect. He claims that label to compensates for his inadequacies.

Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas

[He] was a brilliant man. People tend to become wary of individuals like him because their brilliance reminds them of their own mediocrity. Envy is a blind man who wants to pull out your eyes.

I looked at the group of human remains that languished in the corner and smiled at them. It occurred to me that their very presence was testimony to the moral emptiness of the universe and the mechanical brutality with which it destroys the parts it no longer needs.

I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn’t stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn’t notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there.

Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.

The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.

You don’t look well,” he pronounced.”Indigestion,” I replied.”From what?””Reality.””Join the queue.

Ponoćna palača drugi je roman koji sam objavio, 1994., i tvori, zajedno s Princem magle, Rujanskim svjetlima i Marinom, seriju “mladenačkih” romana koje sam napisao prije Sjene vjetra. Iskreno, nikad baš nisam shvatio što znači “mladenački roman”. Samo znam da sam, kad sam ih napisao, bio dosta mlađi nego danas i da je pri objavljivanju...

Las estadísticas lo demuestran: más gente muere en la cama que en la trinchera.

Uno no sabe lo que es la vida hasta que desnuda por primera vez a una mujer. Botón a botón, como si pelase usted un boniato bien calentito en una noche de invierno.