You run risks. That's the plain truth. You run risks and, even in the most unlikely places, you are subject to destiny's whims.

I’m seventeen years old, my name is Juan García Madero, and I’m in my first semester of law school. I wanted to study literature, not law, but my uncle insisted, and in the end I gave in. I’m an orphan, and someday I’ll be a lawyer. That’s what I told my aunt and uncle, and then I shut myself in my room and cried all night.

For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths.

So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.

Poetry and prison have always been neighbors.

Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to the village while the whole past of the universe fell on their heads.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.