12 Quotes by Javier Cercas

...se puede ser un buen escritor siendo una pésima persona...”“De todas las historias de la historia”, escribió Jaime Gil de Biedma, “sin duda la más triste es la de España, porque termina mal

It is, but a virtue taken to extremes is a vice. If one does not understand there are things more important than the truth one doesn’t understand how important the truth is.

Memory is threatening to replace history in an era saturated with memory. This is bad news. Memory and history are notionally opposites: memory is individual, partial and subjective; history is collective and aspires to be comprehensive and objective. Memory and history are also complementary: history gives sense to memory; memory is a tool, an ingredient, a part of history. But memory is not history.