Javier Cercas: The Speed of Light

"No one comes back from Vietnam: that, once you’ve been there, return is impossible."


"Don’t have any, because you’ll regret it; although if you don’t have any, you’ll regret that too."


"All love stories are absurd because love is an illness that only time can cure; but having a child is risking a love so absurd that only death can end it.”


[a café]…converted into one of those interchangeable cafes that American snobs consider European (from Rome) and European snobs consider American (from New York), but which are impossible to find in either New York or Rome.