Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.

The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.

-Do you think it's dirty money? -All money is dirty. If it were clean nobody would want it.

No llores porque ya se terminó... sonríe porque sucedió.

Hablamos de religión o de economía? - Elija usted la nomenclatura.

Suspiré.Nos amparaba el anochecer y aquel silencio de abandono que une a los extraños, y me sentí con valor de decir cualquier cosa, aunque fuese por última vez.

Alguien dijo una vez que en el momento en que te paras a pensar si quieres a alguien. Ya has dejado de quererle para siempre.

There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.

Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.

One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.

To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.

The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.

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.

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

We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.

There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.

So long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.

Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.

If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.

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.

It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.

I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.