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

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Six years later my mother’s absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words.

Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

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.

A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.’

I could try to tell you the story, but it would be like describing a cathedral by saying it’s a pile of stones ending in a spire.’

Nothing is ever the same after a war.

because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.

who was a confirmed agnostic (which Bernarda suspected might be a respiratory condition, like asthma, but afflicting only refined gentlemen),

There came a point when her mere proximity translated into an almost physical pain.

I wanted to hate Clara but was unable to. To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

Presents are made for the pleasure of the one who gives them, not for the merits of those who receive them,’

The entire apartment was sunk in perpetual gloom, like a block of darkness propped up between peeling walls. It smelled of black tobacco, cold, and absence.

The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.’

He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.’

Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you’ve already stopped loving that person forever,’

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.

Miquel Moliner saw death everywhere - in fallen leaves, in birds that had dropped out of their nests, in old people, and in the rain, which swept everything away.

The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

Waiting is the rust of the soul.’

I knew that one day she would return to me, in the months or years to come, and that I would always relive her memory in the touch of a stranger, in the recollection of images that no longer belonged to me.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they’re there to make our most absurd dreams come true.’

It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I knew that the best part of my life was already behind me.

He acted as if he didn’t remember that he’d offered to marry me and I’d refused him, but at times I’d catch him gazing at me with a look of mingled yearning and defeat.

During those months I spent away from Julián, Penélope Aldaya became a spectre who stole my sleep and invaded my thoughts. I could still remember the expression of disappointment on Irene Marceau’s face when she realized I was not the woman Julián had been waiting for. Penélope Aldaya, treacherously absent, was too powerful an enemy for me. She was invisible, so I imagined her as perfect. Next to her I was unworthy, vulgar, all too real. I had never thought it possible to hate someone so much and so despite myself - someone I didn’t even know, and had never seen in my life.

I saw in his eyes what I would have wanted to see in Julián’s.

Miquel, who was ill with desire and loneliness, knew that our love was a farce, but even so he couldn’t let me go.

You only love truly once in a lifetime, Julián, even if you aren’t always aware of it.’

It’s the only thing that brings us together now, you see. Memories. We make so many mistakes in life, young lady, but we only realize this when old age creeps up on us.

Memories are worse than bullets.’

There are worse prisons than words.

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