The best Quotes from The Shadow of the Wind

The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.

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

Memories are worse than bullets.

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

People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

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.

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later - no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget - we will return.

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.

Making money isn't hard in itself. What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.

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.

One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it.

Do you know the best thing about broken hearts? They can only really break once the rest is just scratches.

Time does to the body what stupidity does to the soul.

If people thought a quarter of what they speak, this world would be heaven.

Paris is the only city in the world where starving oneself is still considered art.

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.

I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.

We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul.

People only disappear when they have somewhere to go.

All the geography, trigonometry, and arithmetic in the world are useless unless you learn to think for yourself. No school teaches you that.

Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We're creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans

A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.

"One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

It takes much more courage to be in love than it does for war.

You say you love rain, but you use an umbrella to walk under it. You say you love sun, but you seek shade when it is shining. You say you love wind, but when it comes, you close your window. So that's why I'm scared when you say you love me.

If you only ever read one book in your life I highly recommend... keeping your f*cking mouth shut.

I feel so extraordinarily happy and free when I read that I'm convinced it could make everything else in my life bearable.

The bare necessities of life will come to you.

And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up!

Word to the wise writer: never underestimate your secondary characters! But watch them... they sneak off with stuff.

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed, it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think we don’t recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself plainly when you have need of him.

Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human.

I'm Starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.

Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.