Quotes from Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Because God and the devil could be one and the same thing, and everybody understood it in his own way.

Becoming a book collector is like joining a religion: it's for life.

Who are you?" "The devil," she said. "The devil in love.

El problema de las palabras es que, una vez echadas, no pueden volverse solas a su dueño. De modo que a veces te las vuelven en la punta de un acero.

No fear is unbearable, she concluded, unless you've got time on your hands and a healthy imagination.

It really doesn't bother me," she said. "I've always thought it stupid to try to hide your age, or to pretend to be younger than you are. Denying your age is like denying your life.

I'm afraid of wooden horses, cheap gin, and pretty girls. Especially when they give me presents. And when they go by the name of the woman who defeated Sherlock Holmes.

It was one of Diego Alatriste's virtues that he could make friends in Hell.

despite my youth I already suspected that it did no harm to keep my ears open. Just the opposite. In life, danger lies not in not knowing, but in revealing that you do: It is always good to have a sense of the music before the dance begins.

You're forgetting about God. He doesn't interest me. God tolerates the intolerable, he is irresponsible and inconsistent. He is not a gentleman.

And which devil do you prefer? Dante's?" "No. Much too terrifying. Too medieval for my taste." "Mephistopheles?" "Not him, either. He's too pleased with himself. Too much a trickster, like a crooked lawyer ... Anyway, I never trust people who smile a lot." "What about the one in The Karamazovs?" "Petty. A civil servant with dirty nails. I suppose the devil I prefer is Milton's fallen angel.

The ghosts of the people we could have been and weren't ... Isn't that what it is? The people we dreamed of being, until we were forced to wake from the dream." She was talking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory a lesson learned long ago. "The ghosts of those whom once we loved but never had, of those who loved us and whose hopes we destroyed out of malice, stupidity, or ignorance.

She had discovered with surprise and pleasure that as she turned each page, the book was written, as if for the first time, all over again.

The sea was cruel and selfish as human beings, and in its monstrous simplicity had no notion of complexities like pity, wounding, or remorse... You could see yourself in it... while the wind, the light, the swaying, the sound of the water on the hull worked the miracle of distancing, calming you until you didn't hurt anymore, erasing any pity, any wound, and any remorse.

Es la duda la que mantiene joven a la gente. La certeza es como un virus maligno. Te contagia de vejez.

En un mundo donde el horror se vende como arte, donde el arte nace ya con la pretensión de ser fotografiado, donde convivir con las imágenes del sufrimiento no tiene relación con la conciencia ni con la compasión, las fotos de guerra no sirven para nada.

You can get used to anything, especially when you have no option. If you have to pay, you pay; it's just a question of attitude. At a particular moment in your life you adopt a certain position, whether mistaken or not. You decide to be like this or that. You burn your boats, and then all you can do is defend that position, come what may.

It's a beautiful thing to refuse to forget...

No le tolero eso. —Pues revise usted, si es tan amable, sus límites de tolerancia.

Nos hacemos fotos, no con el objeto de recordar, sino para completarlas después con el resto de nuestras vidas. Por eso hay fotos que aciertan y fotos que no. Imágenes que el tiempo pone en su lugar, atribuyendo a unas su auténtico significado, y negando otras que se apagan solas, igual que si los colores se borraran con el tiempo.

We find ourselves in the last of the three generations history chooses to repeat every now and then. The first generation needs a god, and so they invent one. The second erects temples to that god and tries to imitate him. And the third uses the marble from those temples to build brothels in which to worship their own greed, lust, and dishonesty. And that is why gods and heroes are always, inevitably, succeeded by mediocrities, cowards, and imbeciles.

Amicizia..." Corso si guardò attorno, aspettando che qualcuno gli spiegasse la parola. "I bar e i cimiteri sono pieni di amici inseparabili.

Pero el tiempo pasa, y dura. Y hay un momento en que todo se estanca. Los días dejan de contarse, la esperanza se desvanece... Es entonces cuando te conviertes en prisionero real. Profesional, por decirlo de algún modo. Un prisionero paciente.

As for myself, I would just say that, because of what I am, I can at least look myself in the face when I stand before the mirror each morning to shave. And that, madam, is more than many men I know can do.