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.
Carlos Ruiz ZafonRead
They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the differing paths individuals can take in life and the impact of choices versus circumstances.
In this quote, Carlos Ruiz Zafón explores the complex interplay between fate and personal agency. The two individuals, who began their journey as boys, have ended up in vastly different situations, raising questions about whether their outcomes were determined by the circumstances life presented them or by their own decisions and actions along the way. It suggests that life is a combination of luck and the choices we make in response to our circumstances.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the choices people make in their careers.
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 haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain.
I think today will be the day. Today our luck will change,' I proclaimed on the wings of the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in a liquid state.
We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.
Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.
Destiny doesn't do home visits... you have to go for it yourself.
I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. I feel nothing at all.
Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber
I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.
I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.
I'm a showgirl. After 20 years in show business, I've learned to roll with the punches.
I never got the chance to meet Linda Brown; there were several times we were supposed to meet or be on the same stage together, but life gets in the way, and it never happened.
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