The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Once, in my father’s bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart.

That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn’t matter to anyone, changed my life.’

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

It was ten-thirty in the morning. I had arranged to meet Bea at five in the university cloister, and, to my dismay, the day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers Karamazov.

We settled down round the table in the back room, surrounded by books. The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows.