They (fables) teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches.

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.

Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

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

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

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.

We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them.