“I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.”

“Memories are worse than bullets.”

“He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design.""You say this as if you envied him.""There are worse prisons than words.”

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened,”

“I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories. As if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.”

“There are worse prisons than words.”

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”