Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes

124 Sourced Quotes

The rain was still crashing down, angrily machine-gunning the large windows; it poured through the gutters up in the tower and funneled along the flat roof, sounding like footsteps on the ceiling.

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

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

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
All I know is that once Julián told the kids in the building that he had a sister only he could see. He said she came out of mirrors as if she were made of thin air and that she lived with Satan himself in a palace at the bottom of a lake.

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

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The only use for military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population," he would remark. "And that can be discovered in the first two weeks; there's no need for two years. Army, Marriage, the Church and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, go on, laugh.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
It's only worth staying in bed if you're young and in good company.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I think today will be the day. Today our luck will change,' I proclaimed on the wings of the first coffee of the day, pure optimism in a liquid state.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.

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

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Where he had failed, I would triumph. Where he had lost his way, I would find the path out of the labyrinth.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget—we will return.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friend's latent conversational and social skills. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Wine turns the wise man into a fool and the fool into a wise man.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
While you're working, you don't have to look life in the eye.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Once you lost all hope, time began to go faster and the senseless days deadened your soul.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón