Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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‘Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it responds to the worries that gnaw at them and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them.’
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Life had blessed Don Pedro Vidal with many talents, chief among them that of disappointing and offending his father with every gesture he made and every step he took.
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‘I think you’re confused, sir. I’m not a servant …’ He gave me a smile that clarified the order of things in the world without any need for words. ‘You’re the one who is confused, young lad. You’re a servant, whether you know it or not. What’s your name?’
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Villa Helius was conveniently situated five minutes away from the great paternal mansion that dominated the upper stretch of Avenida Pearson, a cathedral-like jumble of balustrades, staircases and dormer windows that looked out over the whole of Barcelona from a distance, like a child looking at the toys he has thrown away.
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You don’t know what thirst is until you drink for the first time.
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Those were years when one grew up fast, and with childhood slipping out of their hands, many children already had the look of old men.
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‘I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth.
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I don’t trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It’s a sure sign that they don’t really know anyone.’
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Sempere poured me a glass of Vichy water. ‘Here. This cures everything, except for stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.’
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‘You don’t look well,’ he pronounced. ‘Indigestion,’ I replied. ‘From what?’ ‘Reality.’ ‘Join the queue.’
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‘I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect.
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To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.’
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If they agreed they wouldn’t be potential believers.
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‘An intellectual is usually someone who isn’t exactly distinguished by his intellect,’ Corelli asserted. ‘He claims that label to compensate for his own inadequacies. It’s as old as that saying: tell me what you boast of and I’ll tell you what you lack.
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There is nothing in the path of life that we don’t already know before we started. Nothing important is learned, it is simply remembered.’
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I asked myself what I had done, and, choosing not to seek an answer, I set off towards my house feeling as if the whole world was a prison from which there was no escape.
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‘You’re a despot.’ ‘I’m glad to see we’re getting to know one another.’
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‘You’re reading a lot of hagiography, sir. Have you decided to become an altar boy now, at the threshold of maturity?’ ‘It’s only research.’ ‘Ah, that’s what they all say.’
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‘Are you abandoning me so soon?’ she said when she saw me. ‘Who is going to flirt with me now?’ ‘Who isn’t?’
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I don’t know whether I’m making myself clear.’ ‘You are making yourself abundantly clear. Your arguments have the subtlety of a blast furnace.’
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the ground had been bathed in blood during the years when the city had been ruled by the gun.
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‘He’s a good man,’ he whispered, ‘but he drowns in a glass of water.’
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Every veteran in the trade knows that any activity, from sharpening a pencil to cataloguing daydreams, has precedence over sitting down at one’s desk and squeezing one’s brain.
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He was a small man who looked as if the world had wrinkled him up to such a degree that it had taken everything from him except his smile and the pleasure of being able to clean that bit of floor as if it were the Sistine Chapel.