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.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. Its a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections – and its hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona.
Maturity is simply the process of discovering that everything you believed in when you were young is false and that all the things you refused to believe in turn out to be true.
My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.
Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.
You know who your true friends are when things go wrong for you, but the opposite is also true. When things go well, the people who really love you are happy.
The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.
Why is it that all wars are won by bankers?
Once you lost all hope, time began to go faster and the senseless days deadened your soul.
I knew when I was writing The Angel’s Game that a lot of people would be upset that I didn’t write Shadow Of The Wind 2. That’s okay, that’s part of the game. You do what you have to do. If they like it, great. If they don’t, too bad. What are you going to do?
Thunder and lightning, it’s like the end of the world.
My wife and I were never happy here. Spain can be narrow-minded, and provincial. In LA you don’t have to justify yourself. I think I will leave here again soon and move back there.
I don’t care what happens in 100 years. I won’t be around.
Blaming TV as an abstract entity is nonsensical. It’s our hand on the remote. There’s a world out there outside the tube.
In Los Angeles you get the sense sometimes that there’s a mysterious patrol at night: when the streets are empty and everyone’s asleep, they go erasing the past. It’s like a bad Ray Bradbury story.
Los Angeles is one of those places where somebodies become nobodies and nobodies become somebody.
Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they’re all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realise that most of them are rotten inside.
I’ve always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.
We are puppets of our subconscious desires.
There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.