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

by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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 it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

What killed him was his loyalty to people who, when their time came, betrayed him. Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”

Had I paused to reflect, I would have understood that my devotion to Clara brought me no more than suffering. Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.

Many nights, when sleep eluded me, I’d lie awake remembering the intimacy, the small world we had shared during the years following my mother’s death, the years of Victor Hugo’s pen and the tin trains. I recalled them as years of peace and sadness, a world that was vanishing and that had begun to evaporate on the dawn when my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Time played on the opposite team.

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

“Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not for the merits of who receives them,”

“the praying mantis paradigm.” According to him, its permutations were nothing but misogynist fantasies for constipated office clerks, for pious women shriveled with boredom who dreamed about turning to a life of vice and unbridled lechery.