Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"Few things are more deceptive than memories."

"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."

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