The Angel's Game Quotes
"A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story."
"My first time came one faraway day in December 1917. I was seventeen and worked at The Voice of Industry, a newspaper which had seen better days."
"Any journalist prone to florid prose would be sent off to write funeral notices for three weeks."
"Vidal says you're not altogether bad. He says you stand out. Of course, with the sort of competition in this neck of the woods, that's not saying much."
"You have more zeal than good taste, Martín. The disease afflicting you has a name, and that is Grand Guignol."
"Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls."
"Life is filled with great expectations. When you are ready to make yours come true, get in touch with me."
"In my world, expectations – great or small – rarely came true."
"In those days, blood and violence were beginning to be an everyday occurrence in Barcelona."
"With no other family to my name but the dark city of Barcelona, the newspaper became my shelter and my world."
"I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with what there is."
"I should know! Can I keep the book for a few days?"
"I don’t know what can have happened."
"Sometimes I think that few things would give me more pleasure than being sure I had made a mistake."
"Everything is a tale, Martín. What we believe, what we know, what we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content."
"A religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends, myths or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values, and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society."
"I can help you, Martín, my friend. All I ask of you is that you trust me. Accept my offer. Let me help you. Let me give you what you most desire. That is my promise."
"The more talent one has, the more one doubts it. And vice versa."
"It’s one of the best books I’ve sold in the last ten years, and I’ve sold a lot."
"We only accept as true what can be narrated."
"You have nothing to fear from me, Martín. I’m your friend."
"I'm doing it because I want to and because the occasion demands it. This book is a piece of your heart, Martín. And it is also a piece of my heart, for the small part I played in it."
"The only things that spring all of a sudden are unwanted body hair and warts."
"Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table, your bottom on the chair and you start sweating."
"Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist’s life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one’s limitations."
"I don’t know if I have any talent. I only know that I like to write. Or, rather, that I need to write."
"The truth is first revealed to all men, but very quickly individuals appear claiming sole authority."
"Natural talent is like an athlete’s strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete just because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast."
"Poetry is written with tears, novels with blood, and history with invisible ink."
"It is part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means."
"All interpretation or observation of reality is necessarily fiction."
"Nothing makes us believe more than fear, the certainty of being threatened."
"We project onto [the villain] all those things we are incapable of recognizing in ourselves."
"Evil, menace, those are always the preserve of the other."
"To be honest, I’m not quite certain when my husband, Diego, met her."
"I don’t know whether I’m making myself clear."
"I think you are simplifying things in a dangerous way."
"The best course would be to leave things as they are and give you back your money."
"I would have liked you to have seen my name in a book, even if you couldn’t read it."
"Sometimes feeling and thinking are one and the same."
"Time cures all, I thought, except the truth."
"I crossed the editorial department, cutting a path between unfriendly looks, twisted smiles and venomous whispers."
"It’s very simple. Do you look at her furtively and feel like biting her?"
"She says you’re a good and generous man; she says that people don’t understand you because you’re shy and they can’t see beyond that."
"When Marlasca fell into the pond, or when he was pushed, he was on fire."
"Give me time. I have one or two experts here who punctuate with a pistol and think that an intro is a starter from the province of Logroño."
"Books are the only things in this world that no one wants to steal."
"I tried to read those clear eyes, wondering how they could possibly conceal the dark world I had found in the pages of Lux Aeterna."
"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."
"Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books."
"I had always felt that the pages I left behind were a part of me."
"We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives."
"She smiled faintly. 'Take me for a walk,' she suddenly said."
"I’m afraid I’ve already lived quite a lot of it."
"The hands pointed to seven thirty-five in the morning, but the ticket offices hadn’t opened yet."
"She looked at me, her eyes full of tears. 'He’s loved me with all his heart and all I’ve done is make him miserable,' she murmured."
"It’s only a house, Cristina. A pile of stones and memories. That’s all."
"I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I had no right to say that.’"
"Large clouds paraded across the sky like monumental cities built of mist."
"The doctor says you’ll get better soon and we’ll be able to go home."
"Her hands were covered with long woolen gloves that masked the bandages on her arms."
"We spent a couple of hours like that, until the doctor returned and Cristina was taken indoors."
"You’re wrong, my friend. This is a long process, but I can assure you that your presence helps her – a lot."
"Aren’t you a writer? Then write. Write something for her."
"I wrote until the sun had set and there was not a drop of coffee left in the flask."
"I don’t remember ever having been as happy as I was during those miserable seconds."
"He’s getting closer. I have to go. Before he sees you."
"Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and dream about it."
"You’re bleeding a lot, Martín. You need a doctor. Come out and I’ll take you to a surgery."
"I know you’re here, Martín. Stop being childish."
"In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever."
"I’ve decided to give you back what you loved the most, what I stole from you."
"I realised that they all contained different arrangements of the same words."
"I have often asked myself whether the bullet that Inspector Grandes fired at my heart went right through the pages of the book."
"The city of the damned. The further away you are, the prettier it looks."
"I’ve missed you, dear friend. I’ve missed our conversations, even our small arguments…"