Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, skepticism flies out the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.

Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.

I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel.

He would have liked to know that somebody wanted to keep him alive, that someone remembered him. He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.

Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.

I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.

I like to believe that storytelling transcends age limitations.

Television is the Antichrist, and I can assure you after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to medieval savagery and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb...it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything and a lousy joke at that.

It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for human beings. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.

I discovered that seventeen-year-old girls have such huge verbal energy that their brain drives them to expend it every twenty seconds. On the third day I decided I had to find her a boyfriend -- if possible, a deaf one.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either.

Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.

I was aware of the risks I was taking, but I did'nt care.

I don't belong to any side. What's more, I think flags are nothing but painted rags that represent rancid emotions. Just seeing someone wrapped up in one of them, spewing out hymns, badges and speeches, gives me the runs. I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself

A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from.

It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to the moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

A book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us.

I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth.

Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.

Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.

You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.

Theory is the practice of the impotent.

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.

I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do.

I don't suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I don't trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It's a sure sign that they don't really know anyone.

With women, the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman for the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night.

Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person.

It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.

Deep down we've never been who we think we once were, and we only remember what never happened.

Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.

Disarmed, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you've deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.

Everything in life in nonsense. it's just a question of persepctive

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.

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.

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 its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.

And here I was thinking you were a bit slow, what with so much asking and not knowing anything.

I became a writer, a teller of tales, because otherwise I would have died... or worse.

In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.

Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?... Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves?

It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.

While you're working, you don't have to look life in the eye.

That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.