Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes

People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.

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

Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

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.

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

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

The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.

Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

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

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

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

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

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.

Destiny doesn't do home visits... you have to go for it yourself.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Few things are more deceptive than memories.

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

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

Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.

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.

I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.

He would have liked to know that somebody wanted to keep him alive, that someone remembered him. He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.

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

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

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.

To truly hate is an art one learns with time.

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

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

You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.

This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise.

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

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.

And here I was thinking you were a bit slow, what with so much asking and not knowing anything.

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

You young people never say anything. And us old folks don't know how to stop talking.

Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.

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.

It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.

I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.

We all give up great expectations along the way.

I can't die yet, doctor. Not yet. I have things to do. Afterwords I'll have a whole lifetime in which to die.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

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

A Gentleman's agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.

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