The Midnight Palace

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.

Who are the lunatics? The ones who see horror in the heart of their fellow humans and search for peace at any price? Or the ones who pretend they don't see what's going on around them? The world belongs either to lunatics or hypocrites. There are no other races on this earth. You must choose which one to belong to.

Maturity is simply the process of discovering that everything you believed in when you were young is false and that all the things you refused to believe in turn out to be true.

Whoever said that childhood is the happiest time of your life is a liar, or a fool.

Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny.

We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them...

The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ...

Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people who inhabit the streets, inspired by some mysterious wisdom, relalise that the true history of Calcutta has always been written in the invisible tales of its spirits and unspoken curses.

He was rather clumsy and shy and looked as if he'd spent the last ten years of his life locked up in a library - hardly the kind of man any girl your age dreams of ...

If there is a god, or hundreds of them, I hope they will forgive me for the harm I may have inflicted on you by telling you exactly what happened.

And as he watched them walk out of the orphanage, Thomas Carter would think of their lives as the blank pages of a book in which he had written the initial chapters of a story he would never be allowed to finish.

Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.

I would have preferred someone else to have been in charge of rescuing this story, but once again life has taught me that my role is to be a witness, not the leading actor.

As he took them in his arms, the crying of the babies permeated the night like a trail of blood calling out to a predator.

Ben invented mathematical theories that even he didn't manage to remember and wrote such bizarre tales of adventure that he ended up destroying them a week after they were finished, embarrassed at the thought that he had penned them.

Hay dos cosas en la vida que no puedes elegir, Ben. La primera son tus enemigos. La segunda, tu familia. A veces la diferencia es difícil de apreciar

... a principal diferença entre um homem e uma mulher é que um homem põe sempre o estomago à frente do coração. Uma mulher faz sempre o contrário.

Dvije stvari u životu ne možeš birati, Bene.Prva su neprijatelji. Druga, obitelj. Katkada je teško razabrati razliku među njima, ali vrijeme pokaže da si, na kraju krajeva, uvijek mogao proći i gore. Život je, sine moj, poput prve partije šaha. Kad počneš shvaćati kako se kreću figure, već si izgubio.

Ponoćna palača drugi je roman koji sam objavio, 1994., i tvori, zajedno s Princem magle, Rujanskim svjetlima i Marinom, seriju "mladenačkih" romana koje sam napisao prije Sjene vjetra. Iskreno, nikad baš nisam shvatio što znači "mladenački roman". Samo znam da sam, kad sam ih napisao, bio dosta mlađi nego danas i da je pri objavljivanju moja zamisao bila da će roman, ako sam posao obavio dobro, sigurno zainteresirati mlade čitatelje između devet i devedeset godina.

Dorosłość nie jest niczym więcej niż tylko odkrywaniem, że wszystko, w co wierzyłeś, kiedy byłeś młody, to fałsz, a z kolei wszystko to, co w młodości odrzucałeś, teraz okazuje się prawdą.

Wiedziała z doświadczenia, że przyszłość pozostawi jej aż nadto czasu, by żalić się nad błędami popełnionymi w przeszłości.

Madurar no es más que el proceso de descubrir que todo aquello que creías cuando eras joven, es falso y que, a su vez, todo cuanto rechazabas creer en tu juventud resulta ser cierto ¿Cuándo piensas madurar tu?

La mayoría de las tradiciones no son más que las enfermedades de una sociedad.

...normalmente se permite a los muchachos vivir en la ignorancia del verdadero rostro del mundo hasta bien entrada la juventud, pero temo que vosotros no tendréis ese dudoso privilegio.