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

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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.”

“Everything in life has been done by someone before, at least anything worth doing,” I said. “The trick is to try to do it a bit better.”

“To write is to rewrite,” he kept reminding me. “One writes for oneself, and one rewrites for others.”