Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Few things are more deceptive than memories."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice."

"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you."

"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you."

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

"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."

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

"There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse."

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

"Few things are more deceptive than memories."