Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes

page 3

“Some things have to be seen in the shadows”

“Everything in life in nonsense. It's just a question of persepctive”

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

“Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.”

“Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?… Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves?”

“Patience is the mother of all virtues and the godmother of madness”

“While you're working, you don't have to look life in the eye.”

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

“A man must have vices, expensive ones if possible. Otherwise when he reaches old age he will have nothing to be redeemed from.”

“I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel.”

“You can come share a tasty meal of bread, raisins, and fresh cheese. With that, andanyone can live to a hundred.”

“Whoever said that childhood is the happiest time of your life is a liar, or a fool.”

“I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.”

“Disarmed, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you've deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.”

“Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends, myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values, and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society.”

“Old age is the lubricant of belief. When death knocks at the door, skepticism flies out the window. A serious cardiovascular fright and a person will even believe in Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, 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.”

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”

“Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.”

“A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.”

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

“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”

“People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.”

“There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.”

“Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.”

“The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.”

“… sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"
“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”