He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design." "You say this as if you envied him." "There are worse prisons than words.

With women, the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman for the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night.

It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.

A book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us.

You young people never say anything. And us old folks don't know how to stop talking.

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

Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.