The Shadow of the Wind

The Shadow of the Wind

by

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Shadow of the Wind makes teaching easy.

Daniel Sempere Character Analysis

The novel’s protagonist, Daniel grows from a child to an adolescent and comes of age over the course of the book; in its epilogue he appears as a middle-aged man and a father. Daniel becomes fascinated with the author Julián Carax after taking one of his novels from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. As Daniel grows up, he learns more about the author’s past and finds that his own life starts to resemble Carax’s. At first he’s flattered and excited by the similarities, but when he finds that Carax’s life was derailed by tragedy he realizes he needs to differentiate his own narrative from Carax’s, which he accomplishes when they kill their mutual enemy, Inspector Fumero. For some time, Daniel chafes against his close relationship with his father, Mr. Sempere, searching out other mentors who are more powerful and traditionally masculine, but he ultimately admires his father’s kindness and is happy to grow into a man like him. Although Daniel is an intelligent and creative boy who grows up with aspirations to be a writer, he achieves a more subdued happy ending as a husband to Bea, a father, and an owner of a struggling bookshop. Daniel’s modest and realistic tone as an adult contrasts with his romantic impulses and penchant for Gothic narratives as a boy.

Daniel Sempere Quotes in The Shadow of the Wind

The The Shadow of the Wind quotes below are all either spoken by Daniel Sempere or refer to Daniel Sempere. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Duality and Repetition Theme Icon
).
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books Quotes

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down the pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Related Characters: Mr. Sempere (speaker), Daniel Sempere
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered, while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny, but at that precise moment I knew I had already chosen the book I was going to adopt, or that was going to adopt me.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Days of Ashes: Chapter 5 Quotes

I could not blot out Clara’s story about her father’s disappearance. In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety-year-old neighbors, like a hellish lottery. But I couldn’t absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned by hatred, that death could be dressed in a uniform or a raincoat, queue up at a cinema, laugh in bars, or take his children out for walk…and then, in the afternoon, make someone disappear in the dungeons of Montjuïc Castle.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Clara Barceló
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:

Going over all this in my mind, it occurred to me that perhaps the papier-mâché world that I accepted as real was only a stage setting.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Mr. Sempere
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
An Empty Plate: Chapter 10 Quotes

I couldn’t help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking into an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 17 Quotes

I imagined Julián Carax at that age, holding that image in his hands…and for a moment I thought there were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, and that the light that smiled on me was borrowed light, real only as long as I could hold it in my eyes, second by second.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Julián Carax
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 20 Quotes

Julián lived in his books. The body that ended up in the morgue was only a part of him. His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.

Related Characters: Nuria Monfort (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 28 Quotes

He didn’t tell me any of that because he knew that the miracle happened only once…A thousand times I’ve wanted to recover that first afternoon with Bea in the rambling house of Avenida del Tibidabo…

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Fermín, Beatriz (“Bea”) Aguilar
Page Number: 241
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 31 Quotes

Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.

Related Characters: Jacinta Coronado (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax, Penélope Aldaya
Page Number: 265
Explanation and Analysis:

“Look, the one thing that really pisses me off is people who stir up the shit from the past!” Fumero cried out. “Things from the past have to be left alone, do you understand?”

Related Characters: Inspector Javier Fumero (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Fermín
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 33 Quotes

I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Mr. Sempere
Page Number: 296
Explanation and Analysis:
Nuria Monfort: Chapter 13 Quotes

I was afraid of listening to Julián and starting to believe, as he did, that we were all bound together in a strange chain of destiny, afraid of recognizing in you the Julián I had lost.

Related Characters: Nuria Monfort (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax
Page Number: 445
Explanation and Analysis:

Of all the things that Julián wrote, the one I have always felt closest to my heart is that so long as we are being remembered, we remain alive…Remember me, Daniel, even if it’s only in a corner and secretly. Don’t let me go.

Related Characters: Nuria Monfort (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax
Page Number: 446
Explanation and Analysis:
The Shadow of the Wind: Chapter 4 Quotes

It was Laín Coubert, just as I’d learned to fear him reading the pages of a book, so many years ago…I saw how the hand of the angel pierced [Fumero’s] chest, spearing him, how the accursed soul was driven out like black vapor, falling like frozen tears over the mirror of water.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Julián Carax, Inspector Javier Fumero, Laín Coubert / The Stranger
Related Symbols: Angels and Devils
Page Number: 465
Explanation and Analysis:
Postmortem Quotes

I can’t remember his exact words, or the sound of his voice. I do know that he held my hand and I felt as if he were asking me to live for him, telling me I would never see him again. What I have not forgotten is what I told him. I told him to take that pen, which had always been his, and write again.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Julián Carax
Related Symbols: The Fountain Pen
Page Number: 471
Explanation and Analysis:
Dramatis Personae Quotes

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Beatriz (“Bea”) Aguilar
Page Number: 484
Explanation and Analysis:
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Daniel Sempere Quotes in The Shadow of the Wind

The The Shadow of the Wind quotes below are all either spoken by Daniel Sempere or refer to Daniel Sempere. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Duality and Repetition Theme Icon
).
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books Quotes

Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down the pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Related Characters: Mr. Sempere (speaker), Daniel Sempere
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered, while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny, but at that precise moment I knew I had already chosen the book I was going to adopt, or that was going to adopt me.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Days of Ashes: Chapter 5 Quotes

I could not blot out Clara’s story about her father’s disappearance. In my world death was like a nameless and incomprehensible hand, a door-to-door salesman who took away mothers, beggars, or ninety-year-old neighbors, like a hellish lottery. But I couldn’t absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned by hatred, that death could be dressed in a uniform or a raincoat, queue up at a cinema, laugh in bars, or take his children out for walk…and then, in the afternoon, make someone disappear in the dungeons of Montjuïc Castle.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Clara Barceló
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:

Going over all this in my mind, it occurred to me that perhaps the papier-mâché world that I accepted as real was only a stage setting.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Mr. Sempere
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
An Empty Plate: Chapter 10 Quotes

I couldn’t help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking into an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
Page Number: 76
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 17 Quotes

I imagined Julián Carax at that age, holding that image in his hands…and for a moment I thought there were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, and that the light that smiled on me was borrowed light, real only as long as I could hold it in my eyes, second by second.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Julián Carax
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 20 Quotes

Julián lived in his books. The body that ended up in the morgue was only a part of him. His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.

Related Characters: Nuria Monfort (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax
Page Number: 166
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 28 Quotes

He didn’t tell me any of that because he knew that the miracle happened only once…A thousand times I’ve wanted to recover that first afternoon with Bea in the rambling house of Avenida del Tibidabo…

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Fermín, Beatriz (“Bea”) Aguilar
Page Number: 241
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 31 Quotes

Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.

Related Characters: Jacinta Coronado (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax, Penélope Aldaya
Page Number: 265
Explanation and Analysis:

“Look, the one thing that really pisses me off is people who stir up the shit from the past!” Fumero cried out. “Things from the past have to be left alone, do you understand?”

Related Characters: Inspector Javier Fumero (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Fermín
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:
City of Shadows: Chapter 33 Quotes

I looked at that man whom I had once imagined almost invincible; he now seemed fragile, defeated without knowing it. Perhaps we were both defeated.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Mr. Sempere
Page Number: 296
Explanation and Analysis:
Nuria Monfort: Chapter 13 Quotes

I was afraid of listening to Julián and starting to believe, as he did, that we were all bound together in a strange chain of destiny, afraid of recognizing in you the Julián I had lost.

Related Characters: Nuria Monfort (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax
Page Number: 445
Explanation and Analysis:

Of all the things that Julián wrote, the one I have always felt closest to my heart is that so long as we are being remembered, we remain alive…Remember me, Daniel, even if it’s only in a corner and secretly. Don’t let me go.

Related Characters: Nuria Monfort (speaker), Daniel Sempere, Julián Carax
Page Number: 446
Explanation and Analysis:
The Shadow of the Wind: Chapter 4 Quotes

It was Laín Coubert, just as I’d learned to fear him reading the pages of a book, so many years ago…I saw how the hand of the angel pierced [Fumero’s] chest, spearing him, how the accursed soul was driven out like black vapor, falling like frozen tears over the mirror of water.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Julián Carax, Inspector Javier Fumero, Laín Coubert / The Stranger
Related Symbols: Angels and Devils
Page Number: 465
Explanation and Analysis:
Postmortem Quotes

I can’t remember his exact words, or the sound of his voice. I do know that he held my hand and I felt as if he were asking me to live for him, telling me I would never see him again. What I have not forgotten is what I told him. I told him to take that pen, which had always been his, and write again.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Julián Carax
Related Symbols: The Fountain Pen
Page Number: 471
Explanation and Analysis:
Dramatis Personae Quotes

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

Related Characters: Daniel Sempere (speaker), Beatriz (“Bea”) Aguilar
Page Number: 484
Explanation and Analysis: