Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

How beautiful life would be if we were able to love those who deserve it.

If you think you're the only person for whom life is painful, you're wrong. And if you don't mind letting yourself die like a dog, at least have the decency to remember that there are those of us who do care – although, to tell the truth, I don't see why?

Books are boring.' 'Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

I carried the trace of her lips, of her breath on my skin through streets full of faceless people escaping from offices and shops.

Although I could hear the echo of my footsteps, I could have sworn I was walking a few centimeters above the ground

Hope is cruel and has no consequence

Alcohol] cures everything, except for stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.

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

Don't add on any years, you rascal. Life will see to that without your help.

Afterwards, once you lost all hope, time began to go faster and the senseless days deadened your soul.

There's nothing here. Nothing at all.' Marina gave me a look that I could not fathom. 'You're wrong,' she said. 'The memories of hundreds of people lie here. Their lives, their feelings, their expectations, their absence, the dreams that never came true for them, the disappointments, the deceptions and the unrequited loves that poisoned their existence... All that is here, trapped for ever.

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.

Pasamos la mayor parte de nuestra vida soñando, sobre todo cuando estamos despiertos

Wine turns the wise man into a fool and the fool into a wise man.

Hay épocas y lugares en los que no ser nadie es más honorable que ser alguien.

Nature is like a careless child playing with our lives. When it tires of its broken toys, it abandons them and replaces them with others, Kolvenik said. It's our responsibility to pick up the pieces and rebuild them.

In principle I'm an atheist, although in fact I have a lot of faith

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

I miss having a villain. Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely the better.

Una vez busqué en un diccionario el término hipocondríaco y le saqué una copia. -No sé si lo sabías, pero tu biografía viene en el Diccionario de la Real Academia le anuncié. Echó un vistazo a la fotocopia y me lanzó una mirada de alcayata. -Prueba a buscar en la i de idiota y verás que no soy el único famoso replicó JF.

Resentment slowly poisoned my blood and I laughed at myself and my absurd hopes.

The night I met him [he] told me that, for some reason, life usually grants us what we are not looking for. He was given wealth, fame, and power, yet his soul yearned only for spiritual peace so that he could silence the shadows in his heart...

Los libros son espejos: sólo se ve en ellos lo que uno ya lleva dentro —replicó Julián.

El mundo es simplemente un espejo de quienes lo formamos y no es ni más ni menos que lo que hacemos de él entre todos.