Quotes From "The Shadow Of The Wind" By Unknown

Man...heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand...heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her. Unknown

One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it. Unknown

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. Unknown

One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep. Unknown

People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots. Unknown

Making money isn't hard in itself, what's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to Unknown

I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. Unknown

Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go. Unknown

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise. Unknown

If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus. Unknown

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

Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station. Unknown

They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them. Unknown

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. Unknown

In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend. Unknown

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day. Unknown

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. Unknown

After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels. Unknown

As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot. Unknown

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections. Unknown

He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design."" You say this as if you envied him."" There are worse prisons than words. Unknown

There are worse prisons than words. Unknown

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human. Unknown

Never before had I felt trapped, so seduced and caught up in a story, ' Clara explained, 'the way I did with that book. Until then, reading was just a duty, a sort of fine one had to pay teachers and tutors without quite knowing why. I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. 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. Unknown

... Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory Unknown

Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friend's latent conversational and social skills. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior. Unknown

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind. Unknown

Nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds Unknown

Keep your dreams, you will never know when you need them Unknown

The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours, Julián, he would say. Except my dreams. Unknown

Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval. Unknown

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 it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though. When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you here has been somebody's best friend. Now they only have us, Daniel. Do you think you'll be able to keepsuch a secret?' My gaze was lost in the immensity of the place and itssorcery of light. I nodded, and my father smiled. Unknown

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art. Unknown

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart. Unknown

I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. Unknown

Future could be read much more clearly in the streets, factories, and barracks than in the morning press. Unknown

Making money isn't hard in itself, ' he complained. 'What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to. Unknown

Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to. Unknown

Right then, in a nutshell: this one hasn't a single bone of obedient-little-wife material in her heavenly body.'' Hasn't she? Then what kind of bone does your expertise detect?' Fermin came closer, adopting a confidential tone. 'The passionate kind, ' he said, raising his eyebrows with an air of mystery. 'And you can be sure I mean that as a compliment. Unknown

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense. Unknown

Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it. Unknown