Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Life on the streets is short. People look at you in disgust, even the ones who give you alms, but this is nothing compared to the revulsion you feel for yourself. It's like being trapped in a walking corpse, a corpse that's hungry, stinks, and refuses to die.

Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.

Truth cannot be found, son. It finds you.

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

Do you know the best thing about broken hearts?' the librarian asked. I shook my head. 'They can only break once. The rest is just scratches.

Sometimes, the things that are the most real only happen in one's imagination, Oscar, she said. We only remember what never really happened.

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

Are you an idiot? I'm in training.

El tiempo hace con el cuerpo lo que la estupidez hace con el alma. Lo pudre.

Del resto, che razza di scienza è quella che porta un uomo sulla Luna, ma non è in grado di garantire un pezzo di pane a tutti gli essere umani?

Si me hubiera detenido a pensarlo, hubiera comprendido que mi devoción no era más que una fuente de sufrimiento. Quizás por eso lo adoraba más, por esa estupidez eterna de perseguir a los que nos hacen daño -C. R. Z.

I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them.

Don't you feel like a little glass of rum? It's Cuban, like all the good stuff that kills you.

Never before had I felt trapped, so seduced and caught up in a story,' Clara explained, 'the way I did with that book. Until then, reading was just a duty, a sort of fine one had to pay teachers and tutors without quite knowing why. 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.

To truly hate is an act one learns with time

Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds it's 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...

If people stopped to consider even a quarter of what they say, this world would be paradise.

All business opportunities stem from someone else's inability to resolve a simple and inevitable problem.

I bent over her and kissed her lips. She embraced me, and we remained like that as the light from the candle sputtered then went out.

A legend is a lie that has been whipped up to explain a universal truth.

It wasn't worth wasting your time trying to change the world; it was enough not to let the world change you.

Nada asusta más a un cafre que una mujer que sabe leer, escribir, pensar y encima enseña las rodillas.»

El tiempo pasa más aprisa cuanto más vacío está. Las vidas sin significado pasan de largo como trenes que no paran en su estación.

Una vez me dijo que sentìa haber sido una decepciòn para mì. Le pregunté que de donde habìa sacado aquella idea absurda. De sus ojos, padre, de sus ojos, dijo. Ni una sola vez se me ocuriò que tal vez yo habìa sido una decepciòn todavìa mayor para ella. A veces nos creemos que las personas son décimos de loterìa: que estàn ahì para hacer realidad nuestras ilusiones absurdas.