Zafon Books Quotes & Sayings

Well this story is about books.
About books?
About accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of a novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind (p.178) — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that 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 Zafon

There are worse prisons than words. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Max had once read in one of his father's books that some childhood images become engraved in the mind like photographs, like scenes you can return to again and again and will always remember, no matter how much time goes by. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I would like to save all books, those that are banned, those that are burned, or forgotten with contempt by the mandarins who want to tell us what is good and what is bad. Every book has a soul ... and I believe every book is worth saving from either bigotry or oblivion. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, Daniel. I could make out about a dozen human figures scattered among the library's corridors and platforms. Some of them turned to greet me from afar, and I recognized the faces of various colleagues of my father's, fellows of the secondhand-booksellers' guild. To my ten-year-old eyes, they looked like a brotherhood of alchemists in furtive study. My father knelt next to me and, with his eyes fixed on mine, addressed me in the hushed voice he reserved for promises and secrets. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Got up to fetch a glass of water and, assuming I'd missed the train to sleep, I went up to the study, opened the drawer in my desk and pulled out the book I had rescued from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Once I'd worked out that I couldn't possibly expect people to enjoy a monstrous, 3000-page book, I realised I could in fact create a labyrinth of a story with four different points of entry. But what interested me was creating something that would rearrange itself every time you read one of the other books. So depending on which order you read them, the implications and angles would change. To get that right, each one of the books had to have its own personality and texture
even though they are connected, they are very different creatures. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He let the hours go by lost in the magic of words, shedding his skin and his name, feeling like another person. He allowed himself to be carried away by the dreams of shadowy characters, the only refuge left for him. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There are two things that I cannot live without: music and books. Caffeine isn't dignified enough to qualify. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

All holy books are, above all, great stories whose plots deal with the basic aspects of human nature, setting them within a particular moral context and a particular framework of supernatural dogma.
-Andreas Corelli — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For some reason, I never felt the need to have kids. My wife feels the same. We don't feel a void. I don't think they would give my life meaning. I do think of the books as my children, though. Whatever is inside of me, I put into my books. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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 Zafon

I guessed she must be, at most, twenty, but there was something about her manner that made me think she could be ageless. She seemed trapped in that state of perpetual youth reserved for mannequins in shop windows. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My favourite place in the whole city was the Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Anna. It smelled of old paper and dust and it was my sanctuary, my refuge. — 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

Ignatius B. Samson, welcome to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. — 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

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

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

I started off for home, where I planned to recruit a good book and hide away from the world. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This place is a mystery. A sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it & the soul of those who read it & lived it & dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down it's pages, it's spirit grows & strengthens. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands, a new spirit ... — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I'll tell you a story, ( ... ) A story about books, dragons and roses, as befits the date, but above all, a story about shadows and ashes, as befits the times ... — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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 Zafon

Well, this is a story about books."
About books?"
About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind."
You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel."
That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. It's a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections - and it's hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them, and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires, are never lost. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Write," he said.
"I'll write to you as soon as I get there," answered Julian.
"No. Not to me. Write books. Not letters. Write them for me, for Penelope. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Americans are inventing something called television, which will be like the cinema, only at home. There'll be no more need for books, or churches, or anything. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon