Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act.

Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.

Never trust he who trusts everyone.

A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.

Childhood devotions make unfaithful and fickle lovers.

Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.

Write," he said. "I'll write to you as soon as I get there," answered Julian. "No. Not to me. Write books. Not letters. Write them for me, for Penelope.

We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music

There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. Its a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections - and its hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona.

It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.

Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.

Sometimes feeling and thinking are one and the same.

There was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or out of innocence. Or sometimes madness.

Contrary to what you believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch.

I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.

Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.

But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.

If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.

I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

The rain was still crashing down, angrily machine-gunning the large windows; it poured through the gutters up in the tower and funneled along the flat roof, sounding like footsteps on the ceiling.

That's what happens when people reach old age; nobody remembers they've been bastards too.

To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it.

Every labyrinth has its minotaur

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be.

The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.

They (fables) teach us that human beings learn and absorb ideas and concepts through narrative, through stories, not through lessons or theoretical speeches.

A good friend once told me that the problems are like cockroaches. If drawn to light, they'll get scared.

When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.

Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.

A Gentleman's agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.

It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.

Army, Marriage, the Church, and Baking: the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. Fermin Romero de Torres - The Shadow of the Wind.

I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.

It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face.

This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.

Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friend's latent conversational and social skills. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior.

He (Intellectuals) claims that label to compensate for his own inadequacies. It's as old as that saying: tell me what you boast of and I'll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as excessively devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant and the feeble-minded as intellectual.

somethings can only be seen in the shadows

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

I can't die yet, doctor. Not yet. I have things to do. Afterwords I'll have a whole lifetime in which to die.

I wondered what on earth she saw in me that could make her want to befriend me, other than a pale reflection of herself, an echo of solitude and loss. In my ..reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and second hand dreams

Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval.