Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Books are like mirrors , you only see in them what you already have inside you

Truth is never perfect, never squares with all expectations. Truth always poses doubts and questions. Only lies are one hundred percent believable, because they don't need to justify reality, they simply have to tell us what we want to hear.

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.

Women have an infallible instinct for knowing when a man has fallen madly in love with them, especially when the male in question is both a complete dunce and a minor.

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

Me abrumó la soledad que desprendía su persona y, a un tiempo, creí ver en su interior un abismo infinito al que no podía evitar asomarme.

Julian had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

Hay decepciones que honran a quien las inspira.

Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either. Hope is cruel, and has no conscience.

We looked at each other in the half-light, searching for words that didn't exist.

You only love truly once in your lifetime, even if you aren't always aware of it.

Me crié entre libros, haciendo amigos invisibles en páginas que se deshacían en polvo y cuyo olor aún conservo en las manos

Quem não sabe para onde vai não chega a parte nenhuma.

Every paragraph, every sentence, seemed written in a musical key. The narrative drew her eyes through a cadence of timbres and colors that sketched a theater of shadows in her mind. She read without pause for two hours, relishing every sentence and dreading the moment she would reach the end.

De libros malditos, del hombre que los escribió, de un personaje que se escapó de las páginas de una novela para quemarla, de una traición y de una amistad perdida. Es una historia de amor, de odio y de los sueños que viven en la sombra del viento.

Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table, your bottom on the chair and you start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts. That's called inspiration.

Where he had failed, I would triumph. Where he had lost his way, I would find the path out of the labyrinth.

A madman is one who considers himself sane and thinks that fools don't belong in his rank.

Me incliné sobre ella y recorrí la piel de su vientre con la yema del dedo. Bea dejó caer los párpados, los ojos y me sonrió, segura y fuerte. -Hazme lo que quieras... -susurró. Tenía diecisiete años y la vida en los labios.

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.

Tell our stories to the world, and never forget that we exist so long as someone remembers us.

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.

Me habló de sus dudas y de sus miedos, de cómo toda una vida le había enseñado que cuanto tenía por cierto era una simple ilusión y que había demasiadas lecciones que no valía la pena aprender.

und in der schwärzesten Nacht meines Lebens sah ich Sterne.