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When I was young I thought that in order to sail through the world you only needed to do three things well. First, tie your shoelaces properly. Second: undress a woman conscientiously. And third: read a few pages for pleasure every day, pages written with inspiration and skill.
“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 is simply the reflection of those of us who make it up.
“There are no modest books, only arrogant ignorance.”
promises were a bit like hearts: once the first was broken, breaking the rest was a piece of cake.
When you’re young, you see the world as it should be, and when you’re old you start to see it as it really is.
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.”
He never tired of telling me that in literature there is only one real theme: not what is narrated, but how it is narrated. The rest, he said, was decoration.
People live inside their hopes, but the landlord of fate is the devil.
“Will you come back to Barcelona one day? This city is bewitched, you know. It gets under your skin and never lets go . . .”
“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.”
we exist so long as someone remembers us.
