Tribute to Shadow of the Wind, C. R. Zafón — excerpts:

"- no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, whatever we learn and forget -, we will return." (p. 14)

"- someone once said that the moment we stop to think about whether we like someone, we no longer like that person forever." (p. 170)

"- probably because a stranger sees us as we are, not as he wants to believe we are." (p. 171)

"- I was terribly sorry when I heard that Julián had died - he said quietly. - In spite of everything that happened later, and having distanced ourselves over time, we were good friends: Miquel, Aldaya, Julián and me. Even Fumero. I always thought we were going to be inseparable, but life should know anything we do not know. I've never had friends like those again, and I do not think I have them again. I hope you find what you're looking for, Daniel." (p. 213)

"I spent most of the morning dreaming awake in the back room, evoking images of Bea. I drew her bare skin in my hands and felt that I tasted her sweet-scented breath. I was struck by the cartographic precision of the curves of her body, the brilliance of my saliva on her lips, and the line of fair, almost transparent hair that came down her belly, and to which my friend Fermín, in his impromptu lectures on fleshly logistics , referred to as "the sweet path of Xerez." (p. 286)

"Tomás cut himself in the window of his room. He stared at me, motionless. I greeted him with a wave. He did not return the gesture. In a few seconds, he retreated inside. I waited almost five minutes with the hope of seeing him appear, but it was in vain. The rain blew me tears, and with them I left." (p. 329)

"I had the feeling that someday she would come back to me, a few months or a few years later, and that I would always carry her memory in the touch of a stranger, in images that did not belong to me, not knowing if I was worthy of all this. You walk away in the shadows, I thought. The same way she lived." (p. 333)

"I always told her that she had chosen a bad neighborhood. Low light. An old building. She only agreed. Like when I told her she had chosen a bad life. Little future. A husband without office or benefit. It is curious how we judge others and do not realize how miserable our contempt is until they are lacking, until they are taken from us. They are taken from us because they were never ours..." (p. 337-338)