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

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 was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny.

Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.

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

That's what happens when people reach old age; nobody remembers they've been bastards too.