More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
life was still a few sizes too big for me,
The memories we bury under mountains of silence are the ones that never stop haunting us.
He unbuttoned his raincoat, a vast emporium of wonders that doubled as a mobile herbalist’s shop, museum of odds and ends, and carrier bag of curiosities and relics picked up from a thousand flea markets and third-rate auctions.
“Daniel, my friend. God, or whoever fills in during his absence, has seen fit to make it easier to become a father than to pass one’s driving test. Such an unhappy circumstance means that a disproportionate legion of cretins, dimwits, and bona fide imbeciles flaunt paternity medals and consider themselves fully qualified to keep procreating and ruining forever the lives of the unfortunate children they spawn like mice. That is why, speaking with the authority bestowed on me by the fact that I too find myself ready to embark on the enterprise of getting my beloved Bernarda knocked up as soon as
...more
Children, at least yours, Daniel, bring joy and a plan with them when they’re born, and so long as one has a drop of decency in one’s soul, and some brains in one’s head, one can find a way to avoid ruining their lives and be a parent they will never have to be ashamed of.”
“In life, nothing worthwhile is easy, Daniel.
“A man should be allowed to take some secrets to his grave,” Fermín objected. “Too many secrets may take that man to his grave before his time.”
“My friend,” he said at last. “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.”
Most men, including professional observers, confused seeing with looking and almost always stopped at obvious details that deterred any reading beyond those irrelevancies. Leandro used to say that to disappear into the eyes of one’s opponent was a skill that could take one a whole lifetime to learn.
“Behind every bad man there’s always a worse woman. People also say that.”
“Getting up early won’t make the sun rise any sooner,” said Alicia.
Fermín had always thought that destiny, though keen to ambush innocent people from behind and if possible with their pants down, also enjoyed nesting in railway stations whenever it took a refreshment break. This is where tragedies and romances began and ended, as did escapes and returns, betrayals and absences. Life, some said, is a railway station where one almost always enters, or gets put into, the wrong carriage.
there are times when a man has to have some balls, and if you’ll forgive my French, show the world that he was born to pee standing up.
“You believe what it’s possible to believe, not what you want to believe. Unless you’re an idiot, in which case it’s the other way around.”
The strategy of gaining entry is not unlike seduction: if you ask for permission, you’ve lost before you’ve begun.
“Reality never beats fiction, at least not quality fiction.”
one can only be a hero when one is genuinely afraid. Someone who faces danger fearlessly is just an idiot.
Time, Fernandito realized, always flows at the opposite speed to the needs of the person living through it.
“Those who aren’t able to fall in love suffer all the more,” Alicia let drop.
The most sincere pain is experienced alone.
“What Fermín says is that wise men own up when they sometimes make mistakes, but idiots always make mistakes, even though they never admit it and always think they’re right. He calls it his Archimedean Principle of Communicable Imbecilities.”
According to him, an idiot is an animal who doesn’t know how to, or is unable to, change his mind,”
“And how does this monstrosity end?” “With fireworks, a grand orchestra, and stage machinery, special effects in full force.”
The fourth instalment, fierce and enormous, spiced with perfumes from all the earlier ones, would lead us at last to the centre of the mystery, uncovering all the puzzles with the help of my favourite fallen angel of mist, Alicia Gris. The saga would contain villains and heroes, and a thousand tunnels through which the reader would be able to explore a kaleidoscopic plot resembling that mirage of perspectives I’d discovered with my father in the heart of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.
“A pen doesn’t belong to anybody. It’s a free spirit that stays with one while that person needs it.”
