Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes

All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake.

In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.

Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.

There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.

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.

In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.

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

I wandered off, walking through streets that seemed emptier than ever, thinking that if I didn't stop, if I kept on walking, I wouldn't notice that the world I thought I knew was no longer there.

You don't know what thirst is until you drink for the first time.

It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you're no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh - a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory.

...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.

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

Destiny is usually around the corner. Like a thief, like 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

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

If you don't trust a novelist, who are you going to trust?

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

An intellectual is usually someone who isn't exactly distinguished by his intellect," Corelli asserted. "he claims that label to compensate for his 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 devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant, and the feeble-minded as intellectual. Once again, it's all the work of nature. Far from being the sylph to whom poets sing, nature is a cruel, voracious mother who needs to feed on the creatures she gives birth to in order to stay alive.

The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ...

I've learnt that solitude is sometimes a path that leads to peace

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.

A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyze it and judge how to channel it.

Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.

He was waiting for me at the best table in the room, toying with a glass of white wine and listening to the pianist who was playing a piece by Granados with velvet fingers.

If you ever have a daughter—a blessing I wouldn't wish on anyone, because it's Murphy's Law that sooner or later she will break your heart—anyhow, as I was saying, if you ever have a daughter, you'll begin, without realizing it, to divide men into two camps: those you suspect are sleeping with her and those you don't. Whoever says that's not true is lying through his teeth.

Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas

... 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 have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory

Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them, and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires, are never lost.

One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.

To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.

Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny.

We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. It was the early summer of 1945, and we walked through the streets of a Barcelona trapped beneath ashen skies as dawn poured over Rambla de Santa Monica in a wreath of liquid copper.

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.

nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds

Justice is an affectation of perspective, not a universal value.

He was rather clumsy and shy and looked as if he'd spent the last ten years of his life locked up in a library - hardly the kind of man any girl your age dreams of ...

All business opportunities stem from someone else's inability to resolve a simple and inevitable problem.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

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.

Destiny doesn't do home visits... you have to go for it yourself.

1My father says a hunch is your brain’s way of taking a short cut to the truth,’ replied Max.‘He’s a wise man, your father. What else does he say?’‘That the more you try to hide from the truth, the quicker it finds you.

Few things are more deceptive than memories.