Quotes by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Never trust a man who reads only one book.

One is never alone with a book nearby, dont you agree? Every page reminds us of a day that has passed and makes us relive the emotions that filled it. Happy hours underlined in red pencil, dark ones in black...

He who kills from afar knows nothing at all about act of killing. He who kills from afar derives no lesson from life or from death; he neither risks nor stains his hands with blood, nor hears the breathing of his adversary, nor reads the fear, courage, or indifference in his eyes. He who kills from afar tests neither his arm, his heart, nor his conscience, nor does he create ghosts that will later haunt him every single night for the rest of his life. He who kills from afar is a knave who commends to others the dirty and terrible task that is his own.

In essence , games are the only universally serious activity . They leave no room for skepticism , wouldnt you agree ? However incredulous or doubting you might be , if you want to play , you have no choice but to follow the rules . Only the person who respects the rules , or at least knows and applies them , can win . Reading a book is the same : you have to accept the plot and the characters to enjoy the story .

When he stepped into the shower, the hot water scalded him. He let it run over his face, burning his eyelids. He put up with the pain, his jaw clenched and his muscles taut, suppressing the urge to howl with loneliness in the suffocating steam. For four years, one month, and twelve days, Nikon always got into the shower with him after they made love and soaped his back slowly, interminably. And often she put her arms around him, like a little girl in the rain. One day Ill leave without ever really knowing you. Youll remember my big, dark eyes. The reproachful silences. The moans of anxiety as I slept. The nightmares you couldnt save me from. Youll remember all this when Im gone.

When he stepped into the shower, the hit water scalded him. He let it run over his face, burning his eyelids. He put up with the pain, his jaw clenched and his muscles taut, suppressing the urge to howl with loneliness in the suffocating steam. For four years, one month, and twelve days, Nikon always got into the shower with him after they made love and soaped his back slowly, interminably. And often she put her arms around him, like a little girl in the rain. One day Ill leave without ever really knowing you. Youll remember my big, dark eyes. The reproachful silences. The moans of anxiety as I slept. The nightmares you couldnt save me from. Youll remember all this when Im gone.

You can make a text mean anything, especially if it’s old and full of ambiguities.

Then she leant over and kissed him very slowly, with infinite tenderness. As if she had had to wait an eternity to do so.

What about the future?Well talk about the future when it gets here.

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

Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. Its about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.

It really doesnt bother me, she said. Ive 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.

That was the problem with modern day witches , thought Corso : they didnt have any secrets . Everything was out in the open , you could read all about them in any Whos Who or gossip column . Baronesses or not , they had become predictable , vulgar . Torquemada would have been bored to death by it all .

But that is the way of life, and that was but one of the first times, among no few to come, that I was taught a useful lesson about how appearances trump truth, and how villains hide their vices behind masks of piety, honour, and decency. And that to denounce evildoers without proof, attack them with weapons, trust blindly in reason or justice, is often the fastest road toward ones own perdition, while the scoundrels who use influence or money as a shield remained untouched.

An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelists genius