Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes
Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.
The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And its a woman whos extremely vain.
A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.
Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.
. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?" “Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.
We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music
It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.
Julian once wrote that coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires.
I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself.
The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be.
Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.
The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.
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.
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.
But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.
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.
His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.
The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.
Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.
It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny.
Once you lost all hope, time began to go faster and the senseless days deadened your soul.
Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.
Maturity is simply the process of discovering that everything you believed in when you were young is false and that all the things you refused to believe in turn out to be true.
That's what happens when people reach old age; nobody remembers they've been bastards too.
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.
Deep down we've never been who we think we once were, and we only remember what never happened.
I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.
Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.
It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.
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.
