Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“Ezt a világot nem az atombomba fogja elpusztítani, akármit is írnak az újságok, hanem a nevetségesség, a banalitás, és az a megátalkodott szokás, hogy mindenből viccet csinálunk, méghozzá rossz viccet.”

“Az életet Istentől kapjuk, de a világot az Ördög felügyeli.”

“A good friend once told me that the problems are like cockroaches. If drawn to light, they'll get scared.”

“If people thought a quarter of what they speak, this world would be heaven.”

“Isaac pakte een olielamp van de vloer en hief hem op ter hoogte van mijn gezicht. 'U ziet er niet goed uit,' oordeelde hij. 'Indigestie.' 'Waarvan?' 'Het leven.' 'Sluit u dan maar achteraan in de rij.”

“I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their own secret plan, even though we don't understand it .”

“That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.”

“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.”

“Every book, every volume that 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.”

“I know you're not a man of faith, Edmond, but faith is found when one isn't looking for it and the day will come when your heart, and not your mind, will long for the purification of the soul.”

“It's funny how we judge others and don't realize the extent of our disdain until they are no longer there, until they are taken from us. They're taken from us because they've never been ours...”

“You only love truly once in your lifetime, even if you aren't always aware of it.”

“ I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us. ”

“A veces dudo de mi memoria y me pregunto si únicamente seré capaz de recordar lo que nunca sucedió”

“To tryly hate is ab art one learns with time”

“Si me hubiera detenido a pensarlo, hubiera comprendido que mi devoción no era más que una fuente de sufrimiento. Quizás por eso lo adoraba más, por esa estupidez eterna de perseguir a los que nos hacen daño" -C. R. Z.”

“A man who could urinate standing up and without help was a man in a fit state to face his responsibilities.”

“Se não confiar num escritor de romances, vai confiar em quem?”

“- Brilhante discurso - comentou Martín.- Histórico. Cada vez que esse homem fala, a história do pensamento no ocidente realiza uma revolução copernicana.”

“There is nothing in the path of life that we don't already know before we start. Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.”

“Numa ocasião ouvi um cliente habitual comentar na livraria do meu pai que poucas coisas marcam tanto um leitor como o primeiro livro que realmente abre caminho até ao seu coração.”

“[H]e lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years.”

“The bookseller handed me the book and winked."Have a good look at it, little dumpling. I don't want you coming back to me saying I've switched it, eh?""I trust you," I said."Stuff and nonsense. The last guy who said that to me (a tourist who was convinced that Hemingway had invented the fabada stew during the San Fermín bull run) bought a copy of Hamlet signed by Shakespeare in ballpoint, imagine that. So keep your eyes peeled. In the book business, you can't even trust the index.”

“Un livre est un miroir ou nous trouvons seulement ce que nous portons déjà en nous”

“Nous restons vivants tant que quelqu'un se souvient de nous”

“This is emotional blackmail.''No, it’s life.”

“Baje a la orilla y me senté en la arena, donde años atrás había esparcido las cenizas de Marina. La misma luz de aquel día encendió el cielo y sentí su presencia, intensa. Comprendí que ya no podía ni quería huir más. Había vuelto a casa.”

“Some years had passed, but one never forgets faces one wholeheartedly detests.”

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

“There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.”

“The world's very small when you don't have anywhere to go.”

“Madmen always think it's the others who are mad.”

“Sometimes one forgets that not everyone in this world is a bastard.”

“Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.”

“That woman is a volcano on the point of eruption, with a libido of igneous magma yet the heart of an angel,' he said licking his lips. 'If I had to establish a true parallel, she reminds me of my succulent mulatto girl in Havana, who was very devout and always worshiped her saints. But since, deep down, I'm an old-fashioned gent who doesn't like to take advantage of women, I contend myself with a chaste kiss on the cheek. I'm not in a hurry, you see? All good things must wait. There are yokels out there who think that if they touch a woman's behind and she doesn't complain, they've hooked her. Amateurs. The female heart is a labyrinth of subtleties, too challenging for the uncouth mind of the male racketeer. 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”

“Kad me vidio, don Pedrov otac naredio mi je da odem po čašu mineralne i čist rubac kako bih mu obrisao mrlju na reveru."Mislim da ste se prevarili, gospodne. Ja nisam sluga..." Uputio mi je osmijeh koji mi je razjasnio kako stoje stvari u svijetu, bez potrebe za riječima."Ti si se prevario, mladiću. Ti si sluga, znao to ili ne.”

“Don't add on any years, you rascal. Life will see to that without your help.”

“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.”

“When we feel like victims, all our actions and beliefs are legitimised, however questionable they may be. Our opponents, or simply our neighbours, stop sharing common ground with us and become our enemies. We stop being aggressors and become defenders. The envy, greed or resentment that motivates us becomes sanctified, because we tell ourselves we're acting in self-defence. Evil, menace, those are always the preserve of the other.”

“A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyse it and judge how to channel it.”

“Good words are a vain benevolence that demand no sacrifice and are more appreciated than real acts of kindness.”

“Generally speaking, beliefs arise from an event or character that may or may not be authentic, and rapidly evolve into social movements that are conditioned and shaped by the political, economic and societal circumstances of the group that accepts them.”

“Myths and legends, either about divinities or the formation and history of peoples and races, began to look like pictures on a jigsaw puzzle, slightly different from one another but always built with the same pieces, though not in the same order.”

“In commercial art - and all art that is worthy of the name is commercial sooner or later - stupidity is almost always in the eye of the beholder.”

“What I'm searching for is the opposite of an intellectual, in other words, someone intelligent.”

“Nobody can really be convinced of something he or she doesn't need to believe in through some biological imperative.”

“Wise men think and speak alike.”

“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.”

“In the haunted shade of the Ateneo, her hands wrote a curse on my skin that was to hound me for years.”

“Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own. Humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say - it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”