Arturo Perez-Reverte Quotes & Sayings

But one never knows how the dice will fall, and they are always cast before anyone even notices. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

And then it struck her that life was sometimes so beautiful that it didn't seem like life at all. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

He'd have given a rare incunabulum, in good condition, to punch the face of whoever was writing this ridiculus script. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

He looked around at the books on the walls, at their dark, worn spines, and he seemed to hear a strange, distant murmur coming from them. each of the closed books was a door, and behind it stirred shadows, voices, sounds, heading toward him from a deep, dark place. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Because God and the devil could be one and the same thing, and everybody understood it in his own way. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Flowers just keep growing, detached and sure of themselves, she had once said,. We're the fragile ones. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Who are you?"
"The devil," she said. "The devil in love. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The miser is counting his gold pieces, unaware of Death, who holds two clear symbols: an hourglass and a pitchfork."
"Why a pitchfork and not a scythe?"
"Because Death reaps but the Devil harvests — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's 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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You make a pact with life and death: so many years as a king, and then...Say what you will, dirty money spends as green as clean. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

A woman is never just a woman dear Max. She is first and foremost the men she once had, those she has, and those she might have. Without them, she remains a mystery... and whoever discovers that information possesses the combination to the safe. The access to her secrets. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

What a lousy world, even Lucifer has to resort to the small print. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

What about the future?"
"We'll talk about the future when it gets here. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

They were all content - like pirates - to go around demanding favours as if this were their right; and all of them of course claimed to have the blood of the Goths flowing in their veins; and all were in pursuit of the dream nurtured by every Spaniard: to live without doing a stroke of work, to pay no taxes and to swagger about with a sword at their belt and a cross embroidered on their doublet. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I once wrestled with an angel. He won, but I learned a few things. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

A century from now," he murmured as he lifted a page and examined it against the light, closing one eye, "almost all the contents of today's libraries will have disappeared. But these books, printed two hundred or even five hundred years ago, will remain intact. We have the books, and the world, that we deserve. . . . Isn't that so, Pablo?" "Lousy books printed on lousy paper. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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

Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Centuries of make-up that can be smudged by emotion have taught women to control their feelings. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Now you've seen a hero," he said. "And that's worth something." - Eckermann, CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE — Arturo Perez-Reverte

What happens is that Fate, which enjoys spicing things up with a dash of the unforeseen, determines that everything must have an end, and forces one of the combatants, sooner or later, to make a mistake. It is therefore merely a matter of keeping Fate at bay long enough for the other man to make a mistake first. Anything else is pure illusion. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

He did not want to think, but it was inevitable that he would. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The Spaniard will become a worthless slave, devoid of soul, of reason, of virtue; forbidden by his inhuman jailers from ever seeing the light. An unfortunate wretch subjugated by men who are his equals but who, in his stupidity, his laziness, his superstition, he believes to be anointed by some higher power: these gods among men, wearing ermine and purple, black capes and cassocks, who under every sun and at every latitude will always exploit a man's foolishness in order to enslave him, to make him brutish and miserable, to sap his valor and his courage. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Never trust a man who reads only one book. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Of all the universal lies she accepted unquestioningly, the happy ending was the most absurd. The hero and heroine lived happily ever after, and the ending seemed indisputable, definitive. No questions asked about how long love or happiness lasts in that 'forever' that can be divided into lifetimes, years, months. Even days — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You can make a text mean anything, especially if it's old and full of ambiguities. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

He was not the most honest or pious of men, but he was courageous — Arturo Perez-Reverte

One day he reads his friend's novel and discovers that Ishmael's account and his own memories of what happened are completely different. So he writes his own version of the story. Call me Queequeg the story begins, and he titles it A Whale. From the harpooner's point of view, Ishmael was a pedantic scholar who blew things out of proportion. Moby Dick wasn't to blame, he was a whale like any other. It was all a matter of an incompetent captain wanting to settle a personal score instead of filling barrels with oil. "What does it matter who tore his leg off?" writes Queequeg. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The men buckled on their weapons and started outside amid high expectations, taking care not to leave their backs unguarded
just in case
for Jesus may have said something about brothers, but he made no mention of cousins. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

It was one of Diego Alatriste's virtues that he could make friends in Hell. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Whenever I got any money, I invested it in books. When my savings dwindled, I got rid of everything else - pictures, furniture, china. I think you understand what it is to be a passionate collector of books ... — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You've just mentioned the price that has to be paid ... Pride, freedom ... Knowledge. Whether at the beginning or at the end, you have to pay for everything. Even courage, don't you think? And don't you think a lot of courage is needed to fight God? — Arturo Perez-Reverte

found out later that he lived alone, surrounded by books, both his own and other people's, and that as well as being a hired hunter of books he was an expert on Napoleon's battles. He could set out on a board, from memory, the exact positions of troops on the eve of Waterloo. A — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I ask myself how other people see me, and I hope they see me from way far away. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The problem with words is that once spoken, they cannot find their way back to the speaker alone. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Paco Montegrifo was the sort of man who decides, as soon as he's old enough to make such decisions, that black socks are strictly for chauffeurs and waiters and opts instead for socks of only the darkest navy blue. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Films are for everyone, collective, generous, with children cheering when the cavalry arrives. And they're even better on TV: two can watch and comment. But your books are selfish. Solitary. Some of them can't even be read, they fall to bits if you open them. A person who's interested only in books doesn't need other people, and that frightens me — Arturo Perez-Reverte

One is never alone with a book nearby, don't 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 ... — Arturo Perez-Reverte

It's a beautiful thing to refuse to forget... — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Everyone gets the devil he deserves. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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

There had been three priests, proponents of so-called liberation theology. They had opposed the reactionary tide from Rome. And in all three cases the IEA had done the dirty work for Iwaszkiewicz and his Congregation. Corona, Ortega, and Souza were prominent progressive priests working in marginal dioceses, poor districts of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo. They believed in saving man here on earth, not waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. And when I want to know something, I look it up in books
their memory never fails — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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 I'll leave without ever really knowing you. You'll remember my big, dark eyes. The reproachful silences. The moans of anxiety as I slept. The nightmares you couldn't save me from. You'll remember all this when I'm gone. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Always that damned discipline that you wear like chain mail ... You would have got on well with Bernard de Clairvaux and his gang of Knights Templar. If you'd been captured by Saladin, I'm sure you'd rather have had your throat cut than renounce your faith. But not from devotion, from pride. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I imagine he's married. Or was ... He seems damaged in the way that only we women can damage men. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The pistol is not a weapon, it is an impertinence. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

The world is full of banks and rivers running between them, of men and women crossing bridges and fords, unaware of the consequences, not looking back or beneath their feet, and with no loose change for the boatman. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

When it comes to politics and women, you have to taste all the sauces, but you must never let either one or the other give you indigestion. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Later, with time, I learned that although all men are capable of good and evil, the worst among them are those who, when they commit evil, do so by shielding themselves in the authority of others, in their subordination, or in the excuse of following orders. And even worse are those who believe they are justified by their God. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

She loves you, loathes you, treats you well, then ill. Like a leech or a surgeon's knife, she's double-edged: sometimes she'll cure, but sometimes she will kill. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

But he was calm, like a hunter who is sure that he will catch his prey in the end, however confusing the trial. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

[L]ife is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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 one's own perdition, while the scoundrels who use influence or money as a shield remained untouched. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

A reader is the total of all he's read, in addition to all the films and television he's seen. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Sometimes," he said at last, as if it were an enormous effort to formulate his thoughts, "I wonder if chess is something man invented or if he merely discovered it. It's as if it were something that has always been there, since the beginning of the universe. Like whole numbers. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

It seemed to Don Jaime that you could find in the memory of every man the bittersweet shadow of a woman. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Becoming a book collector is like joining a religion: it's for life. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

Don Jaime relied on this to conserve what he defined as serenity: peace of mind and soul, the only fragment of wisdom to which human imperfection could aspire. His whole life lay before him, smooth, broad, and definitive, as untroubled by uncertainty as a river flowing to the sea. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

If you put forward arguments and justifications when you are annoyed, you give out more information to your opponent — Arturo Perez-Reverte

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. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations. — Arturo Perez-Reverte