A great riposte, of course, and true to a large extent.  Having dismissed a book, it sometimes happens that I come back to it later, even decades later, and wonder at how absent I must have been at the previous encounter.

This quotation is echoed much later in the book, by someone who escapes the ensnaring constraints of previous generations, after an intricate rollercoaster dénouement.

‘Books are boring.’

‘Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you,’ answered Julián.’

See also our celebration of this book, complete with a mosaic of illustrated quotations and metaphors.

Source: Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, trans. Lucia Graves (London: Phoenix, 2012), p. 215

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