In the haunted shade of the Ateneo, her hands wrote a curse on my skin that was to hound me for years.

A Gentleman’s agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.

I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do.

One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are...

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.

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

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.

[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.

Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.

But I couldn’t absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred.

Remember me, even if it’s only in a corner and secretly. Don’t let me go.

I was no longer able to hear the music that issues from a decent piece of prose.

One mustn’t dream of one’s future; one must earn it.

Sometimes memories follow you wherever you go-you don’t need to take them with you.

Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses...

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. It’s a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections – and it’s hidden inside an old palace...

—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.

The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you’ve already stopped loving that person forever.

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows’ necks.’ – Senor Sempere.

No valía la pena perder el tiempo en intentar cambiar el mundo; bastaba con evitar que el mundo lo cambiase a uno.

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...

An intellectual is usually someone who isn’t exactly distinguished by his intellect,” Corelli asserted. “he claims that label to compensate for his inadequacies. It’s as old as that saying : “Tell me what you boast...

Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be...

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.

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

He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people… I got the feeling that Julián was living in the...

Bea dice que el arte de leer se está muriendo muy lentamente, que es un ritual íntimo, que un libro es un espejo y que sólo podemos encontrar en él lo que ya llevamos dentro,...

Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.

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...

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.

En esta vida lo único que sienta cátedra es el prejuicio.

I can’t die yet, doctor. Not yet. I have things to do. Afterwords I’ll have a whole lifetime in which to die.

You don’t know what thirst is until you drink for the first time.

I’ve always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don’t have a brain.

Pocas cosas engañan más que los recuerdos.

Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.

I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I’m also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know...

History is biology’s dumping ground

Man…heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand…heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like...

I don’t suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I don’t trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It’s a sure sign that they don’t really know anyone.

I lent my ear to the patient’s lips – so close that I could feel his fetid, warm breath on my skin. “Can you tell me where I can find Señora Jucinta Coronado?” I asked...

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

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...

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

I realised that I had always been writing things that other people wanted me to write and not what I really wanted to write, so I felt like I was losing my way.

There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.

This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it & the soul of those who read it & lived it...

Making money isn’t hard in itself… What’s hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows.

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...