The Angel's Game

I don't suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. 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.

Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.

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.

Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, 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.

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

Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.

Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.

We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.

I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.

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.

We all give up great expectations along the way.

Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.

Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.

It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face.

I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.

I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth.

Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.

I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.

You end up becoming someone you see in the eyes of those you love.

It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.

I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.

Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.

May I offer you something? A small glass of cyanide?

The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.

Everything is a tale, Martin. 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. We only accept as true what can be narrated.

We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music

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. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.