Quotes from Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands.

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

Toda oportunidad de negocio parte de una incapacidad ajena de resolver un problema simple e inevitable

you never knew when the end of childhood was due. We shared the soup, a broth made from leftovers with bits of bread in it, surrounded by the sticky droning of radio soaps that filtered out through open windows into the church square.

After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered, while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.

Learning how to differentiate between why one does things and why one says one does them is the first step toward getting to know oneself.

Normally, the more talent one has, the more one doubts it," I said. "And vice versa.

Nekad nepie?emiet apbalvojumus, ja tie nav uzdruk?ti uz bankas ?ekiem. Jo cit?di tie n?k par labu tikai pieš??r?jiem.

Noi siamo quello che ricordiamo. Meno ricordiamo, meno siamo.

Que el destino no hace visitas a domicilio, que hay que ir a por él?

religión viene a ser un código moral que se expresa mediante leyendas, mitos o cualquier tipo de artefacto literario a fin de establecer un sistema de creencias, valores y normas con los que regular una cultura o una sociedad.

The main pillar of organized religion, with few exceptions, is the subjugation, repression, even the annulment of women in the group. Woman must accept the role of an ethereal, passive, and maternal presence, never of authority or independence, or she will have to suffer the consequences. She might have a place of honor in the symbolism, but not in the hierarchy. Religion and war are male pursuits. And anyhow, woman sometimes ends up becoming the accomplice in her own subjugation.

Merceditas, no mentemos a la industria del misal, que es parte del problema y no de la solución.

Barceló signaled to a waiter of such remarkable decrepitude that he looked as if he should be declared a national landmark.

I prefer you like this, when you're in a foul mood, because you tell the truth.

watching the steam rise from my clothes like a fleeing soul.

Me alaga. -Mejor aún, le pago. Y muy bien, que es el único halago verdadero en este mundo meretriz.

The main pillar of every organised religion, with few exceptions, is the subjugation, repression, even the annulment of women in the group.

Todo lo que sea caerse por un agujero y tropezarse con chiflados y problemas lo tomó a título autobiográfico.

By then I had begun to understand that my father was ashamed that others might think him ignorant, a residue from a war which, like all wars, was fought in the name of God and country to make a few men, who were already far too powerful when they started it, even more powerful. The Angel's Game

We have the circus in our blood.

story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

Siempre he creído que el destino, amén de su afición a embestir a los inocentes por la espalda y a ser posible a calzón quitado, gustaba de anidar en las estaciones de tren en sus pausas de refresco. Allí empezaban o terminaban tragedias y romances, huidas y retornos, traiciones y ausencias. La vida, se decía, es una estación de tren en la que uno casi siempre se sube, o le suben, al vagón equivocado.

Perhaps part of your problem is that you've been reading the commentators and not the people they were commenting on. A common mistake but fatal when you're trying to learn something