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.
A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.
People talk too much. Humans aren’t descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.
I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.
There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.
Don’t be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.
The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.
But in good time you’ll see that sometimes what matters isn’t what one gives but what one gives up.
Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.
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.
Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they’re there to make our most absurd dreams come true.
Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.
I could tell you it’s the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.
To truly hate is an art one learns with time.
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.
There’s no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.
The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.
Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.
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.
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.