Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes

There are worse prisons than words.

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

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.

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.

Never trust he who trusts everyone.

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.

Man is a moral animal abandoned in an amoral universe and condemned to a finite existence with no other prupose than to perpetuate the natural cycle of the species.

[H]e lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years.

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.

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

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

Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moran or a lout, howeverm doesn't stop to think or reason.

The dead never go to their own funeral.

Cada vez que un libro cambia de manos, cada vez que alguien desliza la mirada por sus páginas, su espíritu crece y se hace fuerte. (Sempere)

If there is a god, or hundreds of them, I hope they will forgive me for the harm I may have inflicted on you by telling you exactly what happened.

Making money isn't hard in itself, what's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to

To Senor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them.

Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.

I was no longer able to hear the music that issues from a decent piece of prose.

Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.

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

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 ...

Keep your dreams, you will never know when you need them

The day I die, all that was once mine will be yours, Julián, he would say. Except my dreams.

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.

Every piece of that marvelous world was a silent tear.

future could be read much more clearly in the streets, factories, and barracks than in the morning press.

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

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.

-Do you think it's dirty money?-All money is dirty. If it were clean nobody would want it.

I imagine some people, like some toys, are born defective - which I suppose makes us all broken toys, don't you think?

Now, back in the reality that always lies in wait among the shadows of the Ensanche quarter, the enchantment was lifting, and all I had was painful desire and an indescribable restlessness.

You don't look well, " he pronounced."Indigestion, " I replied."From what?""Reality.""Join the queue.

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

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

Jacinta never told Penelope that she loved her. The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

He lost himself in the words and images conjured in his mind and for a while forgot ... He found himself flying among stars and planets ...

Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.

1I smiled bitterly, a defeated man pitifully begging a God in whom he had never trusted.

as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive

Every self-respecting act of persuasion must find appeal to curiosity, then to vanity, and lastly to kindness or remorse. Isabella looked down and slowly nodded.

People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living isn't complicated enough

Never trust anyone Daniel, especially the people you admire

Man's meanness is a fuse in search of a flame.

Now he knew that any memories he might cherish during the last years of his life would be only fictions from a biography he'd never lived.

I handed the photo back to her. The caretaker gazed at it as if it were a lucky charm, a return ticket to her youth.

Sometimes memories follow you wherever you go-you don't need to take them with you.

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows.

The day I charge an unbeliever like you for the word of God will be the day I'm struck dead by lightning, and with good reason.

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