Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Cada libro tiene una alma, el alma de quien lo escribió y el de quienes lo han leído y soñado con él.

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.

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

The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.

Memories are worse than bullets.

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

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.

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.

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

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

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.

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

People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.

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

I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.

But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.

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

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

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.