The Shadow of the Wind Quotes

The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.

The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you’ve already stopped loving that person forever.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they’re there to make our most absurd dreams come true.

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

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.

Once, in my father’s bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that 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 we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.

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

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

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.

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.

But in good time you’ll see that sometimes what matters isn’t what one gives but what one gives up.