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

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with

A SECRET’S WORTH DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE FROM WHOM IT MUST be kept.

This is a world of shadows, Daniel, and magic is a rare asset. 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.”

“The day you come to realize that the book business is nothing but an empty plate and you decide you want to learn how to rob a bank, or how to set one up, which is much the same thing, come and see me and I’ll teach you a few tricks about bolts.”

“People talk too much. Humans aren’t descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.”

It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you,”

the city was already beginning to fade behind curtains of liquid velvet,

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

“When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”

The city of the dead was a pit of palaces guarded by an army of rotting stone statues sinking into the mud.

“God gives us life, but the world’s landlord is the devil….”

Without vengeance, without anger, he would melt away.