Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

El tiempo pasa más aprisa cuando más vacío está.

el hombre, como nos enseña Perogrullo, obedece por contra al dictado de su aparato genital o digestivo.

That afternoon he invited me to his house for an after-school snack and showed me his collection of strange gadgets made from bits of scrap metal, which he kept in his room.

It was as if the mist were none other than the frozen breath of Dr. Cain, waiting with a smile for the moment of his return.

Ein Dichter ist das einzige Wesen, das mit den Jahren das Sehvermögen zurückgewinnt.

Ah, el ejército, lacra y reducto tribal del gremialismo simiesco.

Poate c? atmosfera vr?jit? a locului m? subjugase, îns? am avut certitudinea c? acea carte st?tuse acolo s? m? aÈ™tepte de ani de zile, probabil dinainte ca eu s? m? fi n?scut.

traía el mundo en la mirada. [...] Sólo me queda el roce de sus labios y, al entreabrir los ojos, el juramento secreto que me llevé en la piel y que recordaría todos los días de mi vida.

I was walking along briskly, dodging bootblacks, pen pushers returning from their midmorning coffee, lottery vendors, and a whole ballet of street sweepers who seemed to be polishing the streets with paintbrushes, unhurriedly and with a pointillist's strokes.

On one of his visits, he told me how, for a pittance, he'd just acquired the Spanish rights for the novels of Julián Carax, a young writer from Barcelona who lived in Paris. This must have been in 1928 or 1929.

All I did was take refuge in the policemen's convenient grasp, trembling and shedding silent tears of cowardice. When

Between 1928 and 1936, he published eight of Carax's novels.

I've been thinking about what you said the other day, about finding a woman for me," said Fermín Romero de Torres.

Forgive me,' he whispered. I held my father's gaze. Sometimes he seemed to grow a little older just by looking at me and remembering. I stood up and hugged him quietly. He held me tight and when he burst into tears the anger and the pain he'd buried in his soul all those years gushed out like blood. I knew then, without being able to explain clearly why, that slowly, inexorably, my father had begun to die.

und bekanntlich sind wir Männer das verlorene Glied zwischen dem Piraten und dem Schwein.

This is a world of shadows, Daniel, and magic is a rare asset.

Slušaju?i ga, palo mi je na pamet da mi u tom trenutku zadovoljstvo može priuštiti samo da zapalim pola svijeta i izgorim s njim.

recognized Coubert, the faceless man, immediately. His steely look, his shining eyes with no eyelids; his smile as he licked his nonexistent lips in the dark.

Under the warm light cast by the reading lamp, I was plunged into a new world of images and sensations, peopled by characters who seemed as real to me as my room. Page after page I let the spell of the story and its world take me over, until the breath of dawn touched my window and my tired eyes slid over the last page.

Levanté la mirada y rescaté el tono más desafiante que era capaz de usar mirando al patrón a los ojos.—A lo mejor lo que me molesta es que puedo entender todo lo que usted dice, pero no lo siento.—¿ Le pago para que sienta?—A veces sentir y pensar es lo mismo.

Supo entonces que sobre aquella roca empezaría a construir un santuario, un cementerio de ideas e invenciones, de palabras y prodigios que crecería sobre las cenizas [...] y que algún día albergaría la mayor de las bibliotecas, aquella en la que toda obra perseguida o despreciada por la ignorancia y la malicia de los hombres iría a parar a la espera de volver a encontrar al lector que todo libro lleva dentro.

Clara mochte schlecht spielen, nicht im Takt, und bei der Hälfte der Noten danebengreifen, für mich aber klang ihre Serenade wundervoll, und sie mit einem angedeuteten Lächeln und zur Seite geneigten Kopf aufrecht vor den Tasten sitzen zu sehen erschien mit wir eine Vision des Himmels.

A few days later, shortly after midnight, Cabestany's warehouse in Pueblo Nuevo burned down to its foundations. And for free.

spending more time with my friend Tomás Aguilar, whom I greatly missed.