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Kindle Notes & Highlights
When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.”
“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.”
Or he’s a monster? Maybe not this guy but some people suck yk
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.
I tried to sort out the month’s invoices, but the rustle of the sheets of paper reminded me of the sound of underwear slipping down the pale hips and thighs of Doña Beatriz Aguilar, sister of my childhood friend.
Didn’t realize I was signing up to read from the mind of a horny teen (??????) boy!! get me out of here!!
proving that then and forever afterward anything that might occur to me had already occurred to her.
ONLY SOMEONE WHO HAS BARELY A WEEK LEFT TO LIVE COULD waste his time the way I wasted mine during those days.
Where exactly are you writing this down if you’re dead
Contrary to what you firmly believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch.
and what a sentence that is
disowning those whom I professed to love and whom I only used.
But not a word of all this to your father, or he’ll end up with a kidney stone.”
Daniels poor father is such a saint and he has such a hooligan for a son
“Wine turns the wise man into a fool and the fool into a wise man.
She said that Nuria adored me and because she thought her father loved only books, she wanted to write books to make her father love her.”
It was then, without quite knowing why, that I went up to him and hugged him. My father, surprised, hugged me back. “Daniel, are you all right?” I held my father tightly in my arms. “I love you,” I murmured.
The ones with no pattern were twice the price, he explained, and they were boring.
The previous afternoon, as we passed by a pawnshop, he had stopped to show me a fountain pen that had been on display there for years. According to the pawnbroker, it had once belonged to Victor Hugo.
Lmao
It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I knew that the best part of my life was already behind me.
hey I just turned 24
He tore my clothes off me, shredding them in the process, and when he tried to force himself on me, I lay down, offering my body without resistance, crying to myself.
You can never get too comfortable with a male character.
“Julián and Penélope are brother and sister,” she whispered.
WHAT
IM SORRY SO INSTEAD OF ANYONE JUST TELLING HIM WE DECIDED TO KILL HIM?????????????
“You have your whole life ahead of you, but I have only this miserable, lewd husband.”
The real moral of this story is that all men (except for, as of right now, Julián, Daniel’s father, and tentatively Daniel bc he’s young) are gross and/or awful
If a doctor had been present, he would have accused Don Ricardo Aldaya of murder, for there was no other word that could describe the scene within that dark, bloodstained cell.
Yeah if we wanna talk about monsters
Fumero found old men revolting—as he did crippled men, Gypsies, and queers—whether or not they had muscle tone.
God you really are awful
His Penélope. His had been a pure love, a true love, like the ones you saw in movies.
Maybe if that movie is the ballad of songbirds and snakes
When he spoke those words, it seemed to Julián that the hatter had put off falling in love with his wife until after he had lost her.
“See you soon,” Julián whispered. “There’s no hurry. I’ll be waiting.”
I wondered whether, in fact, he didn’t realize how much his words hurt me, or whether he just didn’t care.
I opened the hatch and saw that Julián had thrown into it copies of his novels. I could just about read the titles on the leather spines. The rest had turned to cinders. I looked on my bookshelves: all of his books were gone.
Yeah that’s what I had been thinking
And then I would think about the war and about the fact that those who waged it were also children once.
People like Fumero never stop hating.
Americans are inventing something called television, which will be like the cinema, only at home. There’ll be no more need for books, or churches, or anything.
His only crime has been to admire you.” “That’s not a crime, it’s a misconception.
Does the madman know he is mad? Or are the madmen those who insist on convincing him of his unreason in order to safeguard their own idea of reality?
Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either. Hope is cruel, and has no conscience.
Remember me, Daniel, even if it’s only in a corner and secretly. Don’t let me go.
Tell me where the girl is, and I’ll go and find her.” “I don’t know where she is.” “I’m going to have to ask you to be more specific.”
lol
I smiled at him, and he broke into tears.
Your father is a saint
and I remember my father, who had slept on that chair for seven nights, praying to a God in whom he did not believe.
:(
My father, who now has some difficulty reading the book spines, even though he won’t admit it, is at home, upstairs.
I’m glad he lives to the end of this book god knows he deserves it
Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.
Bea you have no idea how bad it’s gonna get
