Zafon Quotes & Sayings

Hunch is your brain's way of taking a shortcut to the truth.'
'In small towns news travel at the speed of boredom'. — Carlos Luiz Zafon

We humans are willing to believe anything rather than the truth. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

You seem very sure of yourself, Daniel.'
I, who was never even sure what the time was, nodded with the conviction of the
ignorant. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A madman is one who considers himself sane and thinks that fools don't belong in his rank. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

To truly hate is an act one learns with time — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The administrative and hierarchic aspects seem to be crucial in the evolution of belief systems. The truth is first revealed to all men, but very quickly individuals appear claiming sole authority and a duty to interpret, administer and, if need be, alter this truth in the name of the common good. To this end they establish a powerful and potentially repressive organisation. This phenomenon, which biology shows us is common to any social group, soon transforms the doctrine into a means of achieving control and political power. Divisions, wars and break-ups become inevitable. Sooner or later, the word becomes flesh and the flesh bleeds. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I am a night creature, and I write from midnight till dawn, secluded in my office and surrounded by my collection of dragons (I have 400 of them). I only use Macintosh computers, which I name in dynastic order. Right now I'm using MacDragon 5. Only the devil is able to decipher my handwriting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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,'" he argued. "It's pure biology. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The storm had caused the power to go out; the streets were buried in a liquid darkness speckled here and there with the light cast by oil lamps or candles from balconies and doors. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

- Boys my age are boring. They have nothing to say and half of them seem like complete idiots.
I was going to say that they didn't improve with age but didn't want to spoil her illusions. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Blue skies of Barcelona. I took a taxi to the school, where I expected to be — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I looked up towards the immensity of the labyrinth.
"How does one choose a single book among so many?"
Isaac shrugged his shoulders.
'Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person ... destiny, in other words. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Life isn't like a novel, you know. In life you have to take sides. And it's clear which side you've chosen. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds it's 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 ... — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We set off towards the square, where a knot of old folks hovered around the local pigeon community, their lives reduced to a ritual of spreading crumbs and waiting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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

And for a moment I thought there were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, and that the light that smiled on me was borrowed light, only real as long as I could hold it in my eyes, second by second. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not learned to stifle with words. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If you don't trust a novelist, who are you going to trust? — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

worst blows." Clara spoke these words — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We exist as long as somebody remembers us. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Are you not tempted to create a story for which men and women would live and die, for which they would be capable of killing and allowing them to be killed, of sacrificing and condemning themselves, of handling over their souls? — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If retirement requires a certain degree of peace of mind and an easy conscience, Victor Florian did not appear to have much of either. He held an unlit cigar in his mouth and had more hair in each eyebrow that most people have on their head. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Mr. Aguilar belonged to that race of privileged minds who are always right. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In the shop we buy & sell them, but in truth books have no owner. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Had I paused to reflect, I would have understood that my devotion to Clara brought me no more than suffering. Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursing those who hurt us the most. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Maturity is simply the process of discovering that everything you believed in when you were young is false and that all the things you refused to believe in turn out to be true. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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 Zafon

With 'The Angel's Game', there was a lot of pressure from the expectations - expectations from the book industry and from readers; it's natural. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It wasn't worth wasting your time trying to change the world; it was enough not to let the world change you. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

none of us are what we once where — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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

We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect. But there are a lot of people with talent and passion, and many of them never get anywhere. This is only the first step for achieving anything in life. Natural talent is like an athlete's strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete just because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast. What makes the athlete, or the artist, is the work, the vocation and the technique. The intelligence you are born with is just ammunition. To achieve something with it you need to transform your mind into a high-precision weapon. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

( ... )where tourists and people from the city came in search of sand, sun and expensive forms of boredome. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I left the apartment without even bothering to close the door behind me. Once outside, I faced a world of buildings and faces that seemed strange and distant. I started to walk aimlessly, oblivious to the cold and the rain-filled wind that was starting to lash the town with the breath of a curse. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It was as if the mist were none other than the frozen breath of Dr. Cain, waiting with a smile for the moment of his return. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Time does to the body what stupidity does to the soul — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For me, Nuria Montfort was like a mirage: you don't question its veracity, you simply follow it until it vanishes or until it destroys you. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Funny people, the Swiss," he said. "While the rest of us hide our sins, they stuff theirs with liqueur, wrap them in silver paper, add a ribbon, and sell them at the price of gold. The prefect has just sent me a huge box of chocolates from Zurich, — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I discovered that seventeen-year-old girls have such huge verbal energy that their brain drives them to expend it every twenty seconds. On the third day I decided I had to find her a boyfriend
if possible, a deaf one. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I was no longer able to hear the music that issues from a decent piece of prose. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson - that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we'd never be able to choose our own destiny. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I knew that Clara kept Carax's book in a glass cabinet by the arch of the balcony. I crept up to it. My plan, or my lack of it, was to lay my hands on the book, take it out of there, give it to that lunatic, and lose sight of him forever after. Nobody would notice the book's absence, except me. Carax's book was waiting for me, as it always did, its spine just visible at the end of a shelf. I took it in my hands and pressed it against my chest, as if embracing an old friend whom I was about to betray. Judas, I thought. I decided to leave the place without making Clara aware of my presence. I would take the book and disappear from Clara's life forever. Quietly, I stepped out of the library. The door of her bedroom was just visible at the end of the corridor ... I walked slowly up to the door. I put my fingers on the doorknob. My fingers trembled. I had arrived too late. I swallowed hard and opened the door. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

we only remember what never really happened. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Wise men think and speak alike. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My brother knows us all inside out, only he never says anything. But if he ever decides to open his mouth, the whole world will collapse. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

show me a Don Juan and I'll show you a loser in disguise. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

But I couldn't absorb the idea that death could actually walk by my side, with a human face and a heart that was poisoned with hatred. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

She doesn't have anyone. For reasons we cannot comprehend, the Good Lord doesn't always reward us during our lifetime. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Vidal had his exuberant and stately tower in the most elegant and elevated part of Pedralbes, surrounded by hills, trees, and fairy-tale skies. I would have my sinister tower rising above the oldest, darkest streets of the city, surrounded by the miasmas and the shadows of that necropolis which poets and murderers had once called the Rose of Fire. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It is a part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means, be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our lives, or the absence of meaning. These are basic and extremely simple aspects of existence, but our limitations prevent us from responding in an unequivocal way and for that reason we generate an emotional response, as a defense mechanism. It's pure biology. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He held an unlit cigar in his mouth and had more hair in each eyebrow than most people have on their entire head. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The greatest multiplex in the universe is inside your mind, and the only ticket you need is a good, well-written novel. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Blaming TV as an abstract entity is nonsensical. It's our hand on the remote. There's a world out there outside the tube. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Opening the door quietly, I slipped in without switching on the light. From the entrance hall, I
could see the dining room at the end of the corridor, the table still decked out for the party. The cake was there, untouched, and the crockery still waited for the meal. I could make out the motionless silhouette of my father in his armchair, as he observed the scene from the window. He was awake and still wearing his best suit. Wreaths of smoke rose lazily from a cigarette he held between his index and ring
fingers, as if it were a pen. I hadn't seen my father smoke for years. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's
niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Men, as is more than evident, respond, contrariwise, to the dictates of their genital and digestive organs. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Justice is an affectation of perspective, not a universal value. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

All the bad things you do in life come back to you, (David). And I've done a lot of bad things. A lot. But I've paid the price. (The Angel's Game) — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.' - Senor Sempere. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

All I wish is for you to be happy, that everything you aspire to achieve may come true and that, although you may forget me in the course of time, one day you may finally understand how much I loved you. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

That afternoon the sky was scattered with black clouds galloping in from the sea and clustering over the city. Flashes of lightening echoed on the horizon and a charged warm wind smelling of dust announced a powerful summer storm. When I reached the station I noticed the first few drops, shiny and heavy, like coins falling from heaven ... Night seemed to fall suddenly, interrupted only by the lightning now bursting over the city, leaving a trail of noise and fury. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they're all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realise that most of them are rotten inside. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Every piece of that marvelous world was a silent tear. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

1I smiled bitterly, a defeated man pitifully begging a God in whom he had never trusted. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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

And as he watched them walk out of the orphanage, Thomas Carter would think of their lives as the blank pages of a book in which he had written the initial chapters of a story he would never be allowed to finish. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Sometimes one forgets that not everyone in this world is a bastard. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

[He] thought he smiled the way people smile who have no friends, with gratitude. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This cures everything except stupidity, which is an epidemic on the rise. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

To Senor Sempere, the best friend a book could ever have: you opened the doors to the world for me and showed me how to go through them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I was incapable of writing or feeling anything except the terror of her absence, of knowing she was lost, wrenched away. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

All the geography, trigonometry, and arithmetic in the world are useless unless you learn to think for yourself. No school teaches you that. It's not on the curriculum. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Quid quo pro - you cant get something from nothing . — Carlous Ruiz Zafon

Faith is found when one isn't looking for it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The old woman smiled sweetly at Fermin. My friend stroked her face and her forehead. She appreciated the touch of another skin like a purring cat. I felt a lump in my throat.
'A stupid question, wasn't it?' Fermin went on. 'What
you'd like is to be out there, dancing a foxtrot. You look like a dancer; everyone must tell you that.'
I had never seen him treat anyone with such delicacy, not even Bernarda. His words were pure flattery, but the tone and expression on his face were sincere.
'What pretty things you say,' she murmured in a voice that was broken from not having had anyone to speak to or anything to say. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The thing is that my first novel, which was basically a mystery adventure story, won quite an important award in Spain for young adult fiction, and because of this it became a very successful book, and right now it's some sort of a standard title, it's read widely in many high schools in Spain, so I think, in a way, I was a victim of my own success in the field of young adult fiction, because it was never my own natural register. I never intended to write that kind of fiction, but I became very successful at it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Friends?"
"Till death us do part. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon