...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.

Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friend's latent conversational and social skills. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior.

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

Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.

His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.' - Senor Sempere.