Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This is a story about books. ... About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a sory of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.

Y es que nada es tan difícil de creer como la verdad y, por el contrario, nada tan seductor como la fuerza de la mentira cuanto mayor es su peso.

Perhaps Bernarda was right after all, and in this lousy world, sometimes, some things did end the way they should.

Uno sabe que está vivo porque duele, porque de repente todo importa y porque cuando ese breve momento se acaba, el resto de su existencia se transforma en un recuerdo al que intenta regresar en vano mientras le queda aliento en el cuerpo.

Leandro's thesis was that after a particular point in a man's life, his future is invariably in his past.

God bless, and don't hesitate never to come back here again.

U beskrajnom univerzumu bilo je previše stvari koje su izmicale ljudskom razumijevanju.

One has to make one's own mistakes, not other people's. Do what you have to do and come back soon. Or whenever you can.

Dios solo escucha cuando uno suplica lo que no necesita.

In an infinite universe, there were too many things that escaped human understanding.

What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.

A couple of days without a dictator, and you Spaniards have already become bisexual.

Kolo sre?e po?elo se okretati, ali ovaj put on nije bacio kockice.

Odrastao sam me?u knjigama, okružen nevidljivim prijateljima koje sam nalazio na stranicama što su se me?u mojim prstima mrvile u prah; taj miris starih knjiga još danas osje?am na rukama.

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.

One by one the lights of the city went out, and I realized that I had already begun to remember.

Does the madman know he is mad? Or are the madmen those who insist on convincing him of his unreason in order to safeguard their own idea of reality? Juli

Daniel recognized in him a pale reflection of the man he'd leaned to hate. Nothing remained of his regal face, of his arrogant demeanor and his haughty presence . Someone or something has ripped out everything that could be taken from a human being until all that remained was a longing for darkness and oblivion

Destiny is usually around the corner. Like a thief, like 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

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

Que un bibliotecario experimentado llagara a dirigir la Biblioteca Nacional de España, aunque solo fuese durante catorce meses, ha sido un accidente no premeditado al que las mentes preclaras que rigen nuestros destinos han puesto remedio, más cuando hay un sinfín de amiguetes y parientes con que cubrir el puesto.

To tryly hate is ab art one learns with time

Darovi se daju iz užitka onoga tko daje, ne prema zasluzi onoga koji prima.

What Fermín says is that wise men own up when they sometimes make mistakes, but idiots always make mistakes, even though they never admit it and always think they're right. He calls it his Archimedean Principle of Communicable Imbecilities.' 'Oh, does he?' 'Yes. According to him, an idiot is an animal who doesn't know how to, or is unable to, change his mind.