Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes: 30

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

• Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.

  The Shadow of the Wind

• 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.

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

• 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.

  The Angel's Game

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

• Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  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.

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

• 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.

  The Shadow of the Wind

• Man...heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand...heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.

  The Shadow of the Wind

• 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.

  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.

  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.

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

• Few things are more deceptive than memories.

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

• We all give up great expectations along the way.

  The Angel's Game

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

• We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

• Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.

  The Angel's Game

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

• 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.

  The Shadow of the Wind

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

  The Shadow of the Wind

• 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.

  The Angel's Game

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

  The Angel's Game

• 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.

  The Shadow of the Wind