The Labyrinth of the Spirits (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #4)

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“My friend,” he said at last. “Don’t lose hope. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this lousy world, it’s that destiny is always just around the corner. It might look like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor, its three most usual personifications. And if you ever decide to go and find it—remember, destiny doesn’t make house calls—you’ll see that it will grant you a second chance.”

“The world isn’t the amoral place you’ve known until now, Alicia. The world is simply the reflection of those of us who make it up. In fact, the world is only what we make of it between us all.

There are people in this country who are not going to stop until they’ve all massacred one another. Here, when people lose their mind, which is quite often, they’re capable of shooting themselves in the foot if they think that by doing so they’ll make their neighbor lame. This is going to go on for a long time. Trust me.”

Time, Fernandito realized, always flows at the opposite speed to the needs of the person living through it.

When it comes to lying, what one must consider is not the plausibility of the fib but the greed, fear, and stupidity of the receiver. One never lies to people; they lie to themselves. A good liar gives fools what they want to hear and allows them to free themselves from the facts at hand and choose the level of self-delusion that fits their foolishness and moral turpitude. That’s the secret. Oldest trick in the world.”

Money might not buy you happiness, but chemicals can sometimes perform miracles.

Doña Lorena said that the level of barbarism in a society is measured by the distance it tries to create between women and books. “Nothing frightens a loutish person more than a woman who knows how to read, write, and think, and moreover shows her knees.”

No person who has lived through a war with their eyes open can ever again believe we’re better than any wild animal.

The past doesn’t disappear, however hard idiots try to forget it and con men try to fake it and resell it as new.”