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. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a place in our memory to which, sooner or later - no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget - we will return.

People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren’t already complicated enough.’

‘The only useful thing about military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population,’

People are evil.’ ‘Not evil,’ Fermín objected. ‘Moronic, which isn’t quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn’t stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like an animal, convinced that he’s doing good, that he’s always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around fucking up, if you’ll excuse the French, anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin colour, creed, language, nationality or, as in the case of Don Federico, his leisure pursuits. What the world really needs are more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.’

‘A good father?’ ‘Yes. Like yours. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he’s his father but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.’

Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.

Years of teaching had left him with that firm and didactic tone of someone used to being heard, but not certain of being listened to.

Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it yourself.’

‘And keep your dreams,’ said Miquel. ‘You never know when you might need them.’

Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we see only what is good, or what we want to see.’

I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated. I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories. As if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.

Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice it.

But the years went by in peace. Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.

a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.