I discovered that seventeen-year-old girls have such huge verbal energy that their brain drives them to expend it every twenty seconds. On the third day I decided I had to find her a boyfriend -- if possible, a deaf one.

When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.

Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person.

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

A good friend once told me that the problems are like cockroaches. If drawn to light, they'll get scared.