Carlos Ruiz Zafon famous quotes

Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Remember #Let Me Go

...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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Lonely #Confused #Taken

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Wise #Men #Coward

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

#Song #Believe #Thinking

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Memories #Father #Book

People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Life #People #Lesson Learned

. . .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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Thinking #People #Wish

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Dream #Book #Soul

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Book #Dust #Hands

Waiting is the rust of the soul.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Waiting #Soul #Rust

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

#Time #Too Much #Taught

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

#Book #Tradition #Passports

Never trust he who trusts everyone.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Trust #Never Trust

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#People #Lots Of Friends

I hoped my absence made them happy or at least made them forget that they weren't happy and never will be.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Forget #Absence #Made

I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Order #Forget You #Forget

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

#Stupid #Thinking #Knowing

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Fall #Fire #Heaven

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

#Thinking #People #Judging

Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Children #Book #People

It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Reality #Impossible #States

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Animal #Men #Skills

I'm interested in everything. I don't see why Borges can't work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can't be mixed with Balzac. It's just storytelling; it's different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Kings #Way #Sound

There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Second Chance #Feels #Chances In Life

Man...heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand...heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Sex #Women #Eye

This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Stupid #Epidemics #Stupidity

Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Loneliness #Going Away

It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Destiny #Might #Chance

Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Needs #Electricity #Shock

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

#Reading #Book #Heart

It's only worth staying in bed if you're young and in good company.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Bed #Good Company #Young

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Hands #Brain #Spirit

Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Important #Remembered

You end up becoming someone you see in the eyes of those you love.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Eye #Becoming #Ends

I was aware of the risks I was taking, but I did'nt care.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Risk #Care

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Book #Glasses #Mirrors

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

#Fear #Common Sense #Scared

I looked up towards the immensity of the labyrinth. "How does one choose a single book among so many?" Isaac shrugged his shoulders. 'Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person...destiny, in other words.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Believe #Book #Destiny

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

#Ideas #Stories #Lessons

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Humble #Intellectual #Bread

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Believe #Doors #Age

Theory is the practice of the impotent.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Practice #Theory

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Boredom #News #Towns

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Hurt #Stupidity #Reason

Don Basilio was a forbidding-looking man with a bushy mustache who did not suffer fools and who subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Men #Mustache #Suffering

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

#Waste #Too Short #Time And Money

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Way #Easier #Realising

It is part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means - be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our own lives or the absence of meaning.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Mean #Void #Moral

Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Believe #Book #People

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

#Agreement #Broken #Gentleman

We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them...
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Mistake #Maturity #Age

A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Children #Growing Up #Father

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

#Girl #Needs #Approval

Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Lying #Reality #Air

Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Compassion #Sometimes #Difficult

Resentment slowly poisoned my blood and I laughed at myself and my absurd hopes.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Blood #Resentment #Absurd

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

#Pieces #Paper #Faces

Time curses all, I thought, except the truth.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Curse

The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Air #People #Silence

How many lost souls do You need, Lord, to satisfy Your hunger? the hatter asked. God, in His infinite silence, looked at him without blinking.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Silence #Soul #Needs

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Dream #Reality #Impossible

You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Winning #Games #Balls

Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around ***** up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Thinking #Animal #Skin Color

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Book #Writing #Letters

He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design." "You say this as if you envied him." "There are worse prisons than words.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Memories #Book #Past

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Believe #Maturity #Young

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.... We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Memories #War #Names

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Reading #Imagination #Soul

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

#Believe #Desire #Doe

One can convert only a sinner, never a saint.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Saint #Sinner

I prefer you like this, when you're in a foul mood, because you tell the truth.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Telling The Truth #Mood #Foul

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Long #Alive #Remember

The truth is what hurts
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Hurt #Truth Is

It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Teacher #Way #Students

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
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Dream #Book #Loss

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Sweet #Winter #Night

A book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Book #Mirrors #Offers

Few things are more deceptive than memories.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Memories #Deceptive

All true stories begin and end in a cemetery" - The Shadow of the Wind
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Wind #Shadow #Stories

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Usual #Essentials #Too Late

They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Boys #Men #Dying

I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Memories #Loneliness #Heart

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Nonsense #Choke

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Girl #Years #Brain

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Kids #Lakes #Mirrors

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

#Confusion #Ruins #Facts

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Blood #House #Soul

somethings can only be seen in the shadows
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Shadow

She wore an ivory-white dress and held the world in her eyes. I barely remember the priest's words or the faces of the guests, full of hope, who filled the church on that March morning. All that remains in my memory is the touch of her lips and, when I half opened my eyes, the secret oath I carried with me and would remember all the days of my life.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Morning #Memories #Eye

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Reality #Hypocrisy #Spokes

There are worse prisons than words.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Prison

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

#Men #Talking #Monologues

The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Looks #World #Virtuous

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

#Men #Age #Vices

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.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Character #Thinking #Fiction

I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Mother #Father #Writing

Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Art #War #Ambition

I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Swim #Tides #Annoying

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

#Dream #Thinking #People

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory
-- Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#Memories #Book #Ideas