La tabla de Flandes Quotes

“You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“[L]ife is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“I imagine he's married. Or was ... He seems damaged in the way that only we women can damage men.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“It's usually the father who teaches the child his first moves in the game. And the dream of any son who plays chess is to beat his father. To kill the king. Besides, it soon becomes evident in chess that the father, or the king, is the weakest piece on the board. He's under continual act, in constant need of protection, of such tactics as castling, and he can only move one square at a time. Paradoxically, the king is also indispensable. The king gives the game its name, since the word 'chess' derives from the Persian word shah meaning king, and is pretty much the same in most languages.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“Sometimes," he said at last, as if it were an enormous effort to formulate his thoughts, "I wonder if chess is something man invented or if he merely discovered it. It's as if it were something that has always been there, since the beginning of the universe. Like whole numbers.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“In affairs of the heart, Princess," César used to say, "one should offer neither advice nor solutions ... just a clean hanky when it seems appropriate.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“life is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“—Ya sabe que cuando uno ha eliminado lo imposible”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“No hay nada más engañoso que un hecho obvio.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“You don’t choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“The sense of realism was so intense that the painting effortlessly achieved the effect sought by the old Flemish masters: the integration of the spectator into the pictorial whole, persuading him that the space in which he stood was the same as that represented in the painting, as if the picture were a fragment of reality, or reality a fragment of the picture.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“Don't ever trust to faithful, who don't have any use from that faithfulness.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“You cannot try anything in chess until you don't make your move, and then there's no return.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“When it comes to ambition, the only sin is failure; a victory automatically implies virtue.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“Often the battle on the chest board is not waged by two schools, but two philosophies... Two ways of understanding the world.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“It's beautiful to learn sparrow to fly, because it's freedom includes your renunciation.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“God created brothers, but not cousins.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“La vida es una aventura incierta en un paisaje difuso, de límites en continuo movimiento, donde las fronteras son artificiales; donde todo puede acabar y empezar de nuevo a cada instante, o terminar de golpe, como un hachazo inesperado, para siempre jamás. Donde la única realidad absoluta, compacta, indiscutible y definitiva, es la muerte. Donde sólo somos un pequeño relámpago entre dos noches eternas y donde, princesa, tenemos muy poco tiempo. —”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“Era el suyo el aire inequívoco del derrotado antes de la batalla; de quien cada día abre los ojos y se despierta vencido.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“Dios mueve al jugador, y éste la pieza.
¿Qué Dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza
de polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonías...?”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La Tabla de Flandes

“La verdad es como la mejor jugada en ajedrez: existe, pero hay que buscarla. Con tiempo suficiente, siempre es demostrable.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“materia sentimental, princesita —solía decir César—, no hay que ofrecer nunca consejos ni soluciones... Sólo un pañuelo limpio en el momento oportuno». Y fue lo que hizo”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La tabla de Flandes

“Besides, life is a succession of events that link up with each other whether one wants them to or not.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“It's odd how, against all logic, one clings to life in inverse proportion to the quantity of life one has left to look forward to.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“There are exactly the same things in a room at night as there are in the daytime; it's just that you can't see them.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“And only when he'd finished and fallen silent did the vague smile return to his lips, in apparent gentle mockery of himself, of the man he had just described and for whom, deep down, he felt neither compassion nor disdain, only a kind of disillusioned, sympathetic solidarity.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“He feels his soul slowly dissolving in a bitter lament for itself, whilst he searches desperately in his memory for a God to whom to offer up his repentance. And he discovers with surprise that he repents of nothing, although it is not clear either, as night closes in, that there is any God prepared to hear him.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“At some point in his life, César had realised that no one ever learns from anyone else's mistakes and, consequently, there was only one dignified and proper attitude to be taken by a guardian - which, after all, was what he was - and that consisted in sitting down next to his young ward, taking her by the hand and listening, with infinite kindness, to the evolving story of her loves and griefs, whilst nature took its own wise and inevitable course.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel

“Y supo de mujeres capaces de desmontar con minuciosidad de relojero los resortes que mueven a un hombre.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel