Spanish Adventure Novel Quote of the Day (from Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte)

"The story I am going to tell you must have taken place around sixteen hundred and ­twenty-­something ... in which the captain not only came close to losing the ­patched-­up hide he had managed to save in Flanders, and in battling Turkish and Barbary corsairs, but also made himself a pair of enemies who would harass him for the rest of his life.... It was also the year in which I fell in love like a bawling calf, then and forever, with Angélica de Alquézar, who was as perverse and wicked as only Evil in the form of a blonde eleven- or ­twelve-­year-­old girl can be."

— from Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte
(translated by Margaret Sayers Peden)