Queen of the South

Quotes from Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte

“Books are doors that lead out onto the street,” Patricia would tell her.

“You learn from them, educate yourself, travel, dream, imagine, live other lives, multiply your own life a thousand times. Where can you get more for your money, Mexicanita? And they also keep all sorts of bad things at bay: ghosts, loneliness, shit like that. Sometimes I wonder how you people that don’t read figure out how to live your lives.”

Reading, she’d learned in prison, especially novels, allowed her to inhabit her mind in a new way- as though blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, she might witness her own life as if it were happening to somebody else. Besides teaching her things, reading helped her think differently, or think better, because on the page, others did it for her.

“I want you real awake for what I’m going to tell you,” said Patty, recognizable again.

“I am very fucking awake,” said Teresa. And she was prepared to listen.

She had emptied another glass of tequila as they walked, and then had set the glass down at some point on the path. And being awake- she thought, without knowing what made her think it- was very much like being all right again. Like finding yourself unexpectedly at home in your own skin. Without thoughts, without memories. Just the immense night and the familiar voice speaking in a secretive whisper, as if someone might be crouching in the shadows, spying on them in that strange light silvering the broad vineyards. And she could also hear the chirping of crickets, the sound of her friend’s footsteps, and she swishing of her own bare feet- she had left her heels on the terrace- on the loose soil of the path.

It occurred to Teresa that every human being has a hidden story, and that if you were quiet enough and patient enough you could finally hear it. And that that was good, a lesson that was important to learn. A lesson that was, above all, useful.

The advantage of books, she discovered, was that you could appropriate the lives, stories, and thoughts they contained, and you were never the same person when you closed them as when you had opened them for the first time. Very intelligent people had written some of those pages, and if you were able to read with humility, patience, and the desire to learn, they never disappointed you. Even the things you didn’t understand stuck there, in a corner of your head, ready for the future to give them meaning, to turn them into beautiful or useful lessons. Fascinated, shivering with pleasure and fear, she had discovered that all the books in the world were somehow about her.