Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes

“Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”

Variant: There are worse prisons than words.
Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

“I don't suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I don't trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It's a sure sign that they don't really know anyone.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”

Source: The Angel's Game

“But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“that as long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.”

Variant: So long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“To truly hate is an art one learns with time.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“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.”

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

“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.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“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.”

Source: The Angel's Game

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

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Source: The Angel's Game

“Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it.”

Source: The Angel's Game

“Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Never trust he who trusts everyone.”

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

“Few things are more deceptive than memories.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“We all give up great expectations along the way.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.”

Source: The Angel's Game

“Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.”

“Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Never trust girls who let themselves be touched right away. But even less those who need a priest for approval.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.”

Source: The Angel's Game

“It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face.”

Source: The Angel's Game

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

Source: The Angel's Game

“We exist as long as somebody remembers us.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

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

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Source: The Angel's Game

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

Source: The Angel's Game

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

Variant: Time has taught me not to loose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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

Source: The Angel's Game

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

Source: The Angel's Game

“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.”

Source: The Angel's Game

“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.”

Source: The Shadow of the Wind