Loved and hated in equal parts, Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Cartagena, 1951) is a Spanish writer and journalist who has, among many other distinctions, the honour of representing a letter (or vocal position) in the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.

He graduated in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid. His professional career began as a correspondent for Televisión Española in different war conflicts around the world, back in 2003. Later he made his literary debut with his saga El Capitán Alatriste, which was an unprecedented success.

Famous quotes and phrases by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

In today’s article we will get to know more about this irreverent writer and journalist through the seventy best famous phrases of Arturo Pérez-Reverte .

If we have forgotten any reflection or thought of Perez-Reverte that deserves to appear in this list, please write it down in the comments section.

1. He was not the most honest man or the most pious, but he was a brave man.

About Captain Alatriste, a character who gives his name to what is perhaps his best-selling book.

2. No one should leave without leaving a burning Troy behind them.

In the face of injustice, it is better to make things clear and leave.

3. Books are doors that lead to the street, Patricia said. With them you learn, you educate yourself, you travel, you dream, you imagine, you live other lives and you multiply yours by a thousand.

On the usefulness of reading.

4. It’s nice to be happy, he thought. And to know that while you are.

Being aware of a pleasant and full life multiplies happiness.

5. Always be wary of those who read only one book.

A good thinker has many references.

6. The heroism of others always moves a lot.

One of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s most memorable phrases.

7. The man… thinks he’s a woman’s lover, when in fact he’s just her witness.

Men, always begging women.

8. The problem with words is that, once they are thrown out, they cannot become their owner alone. So sometimes they turn on the tip of a steel.

We are masters and slaves of the word given.

9. In a world where horror is sold as art, where art is already born with the pretense of being photographed, where living with images of suffering has no relation to conscience or compassion, war photos are useless.

A great perspective on the information society.

10. With regard to dogs, no one who has not lived with them will ever know, in depth, how far words of generosity, companionship and loyalty go. No one who has not felt a wet muzzle on his arm trying to come between the book you are reading and you, in demand of a caress, or who has contemplated that noble head tilted, those big, dark, faithful eyes, looking at it while waiting for a gesture or a simple word, will be able to understand at all what was crackling in my blood when I read those lines; that in dog fights, the animal, if its master is with it, gives everything.

Praise to the doggy friends.

11. We take pictures, not for the purpose of remembering, but to complete them later with the rest of our lives. That’s why there are photos that are right and photos that are wrong. Images that time puts in their place, attributing to some their true meaning, and denying others that fade away by themselves, just as if the colors were erased with time.

A great reflection on the authenticity (or not) that the photographs hide.

12. While there is death – he said – there is hope. – Is this another date? – It’s a bad joke.

An irony of Reverte’s pen.

13. But time passes, and it lasts. And there’s a moment when everything stagnates. The days stop counting, hope fades… That’s when you become a real prisoner. Professional, so to speak. A patient prisoner.

When the limits of your day-to-day life constrain you, you have probably become a professional, in the worst sense of the word.

14. I can’t stand that. -Well, you’d better check your tolerance limits, if you please.

In times of intolerance, raising one’s voice is often frowned upon.

15. When I see all those black, brown, red or blue shirts, demanding that you join this or that, I think that before the world was for the rich and now it’s going to be for the resentful.

A society in which everyone seeks revenge.

16. All wars are bad, but civil war is the worst of all, for it pits friend against friend, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother. Almost 80 years ago, between 1936 and 1939, in the time of our grandparents and great-grandparents, a terrible civil war took place in Spain. It caused thousands of deaths, destroyed homes, ruined the country and drove many people into exile. To prevent such a devastating tragedy from ever happening again, it is important to remember how it happened. Thus, from that misfortune, useful conclusions can be drawn about peace and coexistence that must never be lost. Terrible lessons that we must never forget.

A reflection by Pérez-Reverte on the Spanish Civil War.

17. For better or worse, despite the Turks, the French, the Dutch, the English and the whore who bore them, Spain had, for a century and a half, a good grip on Europe and the world by the balls.

About the country that was once great.

18. It’s doubt that keeps people young. Certainty is like an evil virus. It infects you in your old age.

It’s only when we feel uncertain that we become passionate about things.

19. The bad thing about these things is that, until the tail passes, it’s all bull.

Ironic reflection of the great Arthur.

20. On the face of it, the world has stopped thinking about death. Believing that we won’t die makes us weak, and worse.

We try to keep death out of our thoughts and that only achieves the opposite effect.

21. I had learned that the bad thing was not the waiting, but the things you imagine while you wait.

Patience always pays off, if you know how to manage the wait.

22. The world never knew as much about itself and its nature as it does now, but it is of no use to it. There have always been tidal waves, you see. The thing is that before we didn’t pretend to have luxury hotels on the beach… Man creates euphemisms and smokescreens to deny the laws of nature. Also to deny the infamous condition that is proper to him. And each awakening costs him the two hundred dead from a falling plane, the two hundred thousand from a tsunami or the million from a civil war.

About the ignorance of our time, despite having all the means to drive it away.

23. Can anyone tell me what the hell that is? And he pointed to the valley with an imperious, imperial finger, the one he had used to point at the Pyramids when the forty centuries or – in another order of things – the cot to Maria Valewska.

A fragment of The Shadow of the Eagle.

24. I believe that in today’s world the only freedom possible is indifference. That is why I will continue to live with my sword and my horse.

A fashionable trend.

25. Thanks to you, I can no longer believe in the certainties of those who have a home, a family, and friends.

For reflection.

26. And is it true what they say, that a woman’s character is shown more sincerely when she dances? But no more than a man’s.

Interesting reflection on how dance shows us the true essence of each person.

27. A perceptive woman,” she continues, “guesses the pedant in the third sentence, and is able to see the talent of the one who is silent.

About the sixth sense of womanhood.

28. There is nothing more despicable, nor more dangerous, than a wicked man who goes to sleep every night with a clear conscience.

About the cynics and their M.O.

29. The Greek philosophers were right in saying that war was the mother of all things.

From war comes peace, unfortunately.

30. A woman is never just a woman, dear Max. She is also, and above all, the men she had, has and could have. None of them can be explained without them.

Influences that come and go.

31. Brutalized in their little miseries, unable to see beyond. Not wishing for the dawn of ideas that would free them… Unwilling to do anything but eat, drink, quarrel, sleep, and procreate.

About men of few lights.

32. This is also the story of my life, he thought, or part of it: looking for a taxi at dawn, smelling of women or a lost night, without one thing contradicting the other.

A womanizer’s diary.

33. …For there is nothing better to define the Spain of my century, and that of all, than the image of the poor and miserable gentleman, dying of hunger, who does not work because he is reduced to his condition; and though he fasts daily, he goes out into the streets with a sword, putting on airs, and throwing crumbs of bread into his beard so that his neighbours think he has eaten.

A crude portrait of the half-Spanish man.

34. Thus, after having had a good number of lovers, a woman should consider herself lucky if she knows how to turn one of them, the most intelligent, into a faithful and loyal friend.

A reflection on love from a woman’s perspective.

35. With Russians and women you never know.

Unpredictable.

36. You were a good photographer because to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to choose and exclude. Saving some things and condemning others. Not everyone can do that: stand up as judge of everything that happens around them. No one who really loves can pass that kind of sentence.

About the profession of photographer: deciding what to teach and what not to teach.

37. And it is true that any detail can change life: a path taken, for example, or delayed by conversation, a cigarette, or a memory.

The importance of small details and coincidences.

38. Those sons of bitches are already difficult as allies, so when they find out we are shooting the countrymen to be painted in oil by that guy, Goya, imagine what they can organize for us.

Ironic historical reference.

39. Let us go back to Spain and let each mutt lick his own organ, mesie, in other words.

Directed at the French.

40. Every once in a while the human race needs to go to hell. To go away well, and that someone gives a little push to facilitate the trip.

Mankind is often enough of an embarrassment to others.

41. Those who are only interested in books don’t need anyone, and that scares me.

It’s unreliable who has such one-dimensional interests.

42. …He knew only too well… the simple reasons why a man with the right dose of fanaticism, spite or mercenary profit could kill indiscriminately.

His stories since the war.

43. The man tortures and kills because it’s his thing. He likes it.

Of course, centuries and centuries bear witness to this fact.

44. I’m sick of this saloon matasiete, with its red cord and its shameless camouflage after a dry courtesy that deceives no one. If you’re looking for me, it’s time you found me.

Brave in the face of the onslaught.

45. Only an organized and strong State, protector of its artists, thinkers and scientists, is capable of providing the material and moral progress of a nation . And that is not our case.

This is not exactly the case in Spain.

46. Do not tell Me that it is not shameful for the human species to have measured the distance from the earth to the sun, to have weighed all the nearby planets, and not to have discovered the fertile laws that make the happiness of the peoples.

Sometimes science eats at us.

47. Today I say Bringas something in which I agree: it is not the tyrants who make the slaves, but these who make the tyrants. – With an aggravation, dear friend… In times of darkness, man’s ignorance was excusable. In an enlightened century like this one, it is unforgivable.

There is no excuse for ignorance when access to information is practically free.

48. It would be fair to remember that, in times of darkness, there were always good men who fought to bring light and progress to their compatriots… And that there were those who tried to prevent this.

Good citizens and bad citizens, in every age.

49. Twelve hours in bed, four in the boudoir, five in visiting and three in walking, or in the theatre.

About the middle bourgeois.

50. In war you survive thanks to accidents in the field. That leaves a special sense of the landscape. Don’t you think?

You don’t get shot if you cover yourself well.

51. We arrived at the coast with the rest of the regiment and the Danes and mondieus on our heels, bang-bang and everyone running, faggot last.

A brief and direct account of a war context.

52. That a skinny dog is all fleas, and we Spaniards don’t need anyone to ruin us, since we always have a good command of the finibusterre of doing it alone.

Experts in digging our own grave.

53. For, from the beginning, to be lucid and Spanish has always been accompanied by great bitterness and little hope.

Smart people born in Spain often have a bad destiny.

54. My name is Boris Balkan and I once translated The Charterhouse of Parma. Otherwise, the reviews and reviews I write are published in supplements and magazines in half of Europe, I organize courses on contemporary writers at the summer universities, and I have some books published on popular novels of the 19th century. Nothing spectacular, I’m afraid; especially in these times when suicides are disguised as homicides, novels are written by Rogelio Ackroyd’s doctor, and too many people are bent on publishing two hundred pages about the exciting experiences they experience while looking in the mirror.

Excerpt from The Dumas Club.

55. As for me, all I know is I don’t know anything. And when I want to know, I look in books, which my memory never fails.

About your constant learning process.

56. It changes things a lot, in that sense, to go through La Mancha with Don Quixote in your hands, to visit Palermo having read The Catopard, to walk through Buenos Aires with Borges or Bioy Casares in your memory, or to walk through Hisarlik knowing that there was a city called Troy, and that the shoes of the traveller carry the same dust through which Achilles dragged Hector’s body tied to his cart.

Another fragment of one of his works.

57. A library is not something to be read, but a company,” he said, after taking a few more steps. A remedy and a comfort.

Ode to libraries.

58. I am convinced that every building, every painting, every old book that is destroyed or lost, makes us a little more orphans. It impoverishes us.

About the destruction of culture.

59. As you know, I like to remember old episodes of our history. Especially if they cause respect for what some of our countrymen were able to do. Or try to. Situations with possible parallel reading, applicable to the time we live in. I assure you that it is an almost analgesic exercise; especially those disastrous days, when I believe that the only solution would be tons of napalm followed by a repopulation of mixed couples composed, for example, of Swedes and Africans. However, when one of those old stories comes to mind, I conclude that perhaps napalm is not essential. There were always compatriots here who were capable of doing things that were worthwhile, I tell myself. And somewhere they will still be.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte and his interest in historical facts.

60. In a venal world, made of hypocrisy and false ways, the powerful, the scavenging vultures, the envious, the cowards and the scoundrels often cover up for each other.

The same kind.

61. To insist, at this point, that I generally appreciate dogs more than men is a truism that I will not over-emphasise. I have sometimes said that if the human race were to disappear from the face of the earth, it would gain much from the change; whereas without dogs it would be a darker and more unbearable place. A matter of loyalty, I suppose. Some people value some things and some people value others. For my part, I believe that unconditional loyalty, which is proof against everything, is one of the few things that cannot be bought with rhetoric or money. Perhaps that is why loyalty, in men or in animals, always makes my sunglasses a little wet.

His love for dogs is greater than that which he professes for mankind.

62. Thus you will be able to instruct yourself and study the law in order to bleed the litigants of their last marvel, as the lawyers, scribes, and other people of bad living do for your grants.

The misuse of laws in the hands of the powerful.

63. After all, what would we be without ourselves, I thought. Life is a shipwreck, and everyone swims as they can.

Great metaphor for existence.

64. Imagine the picture: it would be your grace to come to the light and undress, gentleman, thank you, I see you are the blondest, allow me to introduce a quarter of Toledo’s steel into your livers.

Sarcastic phrase.

65. The principle is true: weakness suits a woman, and we know it. It is in our interest to appear delicate and needy of man.

They take advantage of that helpless image, according to Perez-Reverte.

66. In life the bad thing is not to know, but to show that one knows.

Pedantry takes away a lot of points.

67. I must kill him hand to hand wherever Seville sees him, in the square or in the street; for he who kills and does not fight, no one can excuse him; and he who dies of treason earns more than he who kills him.

A fragment of one of his works.

68. Ah, well said, sir. A libertine takes the social place that many other men dare not or cannot take… They lack, or we lack, what it takes.

His healthy envy of men of joyful life.

69. If I do not fear losing what I possess, nor wish to have what I do not enjoy, little of the fortune in me will be worth the destruction, when I am chosen as an actor or a prisoner.

Great sentence by Arturo Pérez-Reverte to reflect on.

70. As the secretary just read, it’s a matter of choosing two good men among our comrades.

Another piece of Good Men.