Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Pocas cosas marcan tanto a un lector como el primer libro que realmente se abre camino hasta su corazón. Aquellas primeras imágenes, el eco de esas palabras que creemos haber dejado atrás, nos acompañan toda la vida y esconden un palacio en nuestra memoria al que, tarde o temprano –no importa cuántos libros leamos, cuántos mundos descubramos, cuánto aprendamos u olvidemos–, vamos a regresar.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

Julian once wrote that coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires.

I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.

Cada libro, cada tomo que ves, tiene alma. El alma de quién lo escribió, y el alma de quiénes lo leyeron y vivieron y soñaron con él. Cada vez que un libro cambia de manos, cada vez que alguien desliza la mirada por sus páginas, su espíritu crece y se hace fuerte.

Quien quiere de verdad quiere en silencio, con hechos, nunca con palabras.

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

Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.

Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.

I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth.

Todos tenemos un secreto encerrado bajo llave en el ático del alma. Éste es el mío.

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

We exist as long as somebody remembers us.

I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.

Well, this is a story about books. About books? About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind. You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel. That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.

Deep down we've never been who we think we once were, and we only remember what never happened.

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.

Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either.

I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.

Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers.

Jacinta never told Penelope that she loved her. The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.

That day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers Karamazov.

A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.