Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“Sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.”

“Does the madman know he is mad? Or are the madmen those who insist o. Convincing him of his unreason in order to safeguard their own idea of reality?”

“Women have an infallible instinct for knowing when a man has fallen madly in love with them, especially when the male in question is both a complete dunce and a minor.”

“Only three or four things are worth living for; the rest is shit.”

“Una vez me dijo que sentìa haber sido una decepciòn para mì. Le pregunté que de donde habìa sacado aquella idea absurda. "De sus ojos, padre, de sus ojos", dijo. Ni una sola vez se me ocuriò que tal vez yo habìa sido una decepciòn todavìa mayor para ella. A veces nos creemos que las personas son décimos de loterìa: que estàn ahì para hacer realidad nuestras ilusiones absurdas.”

“The truth is what hurts”

“Everything in life in nonsense. It's just a question of persepctive”

“you don't know what thirst is until you drink for the first time”

“Don't be bashful; we're among gentlemen. It's a known fact that we men are the missing link between the pirate and the pig.”

“Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people who inhabit the streets, inspired by some mysterious wisdom, relalise that the true history of Calcutta has always been written in the invisible tales of its spirits and unspoken curses.”

“Who are the lunatics? The ones who see horror in the heart of their fellow humans and search for peace at any price? Or the ones who pretend they don't see what's going on around them? The world belongs either to lunatics or hypocrites. There are no other races on this earth. You must choose which one to belong to.”

“There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.”

“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.”

“If there is a god, or hundreds of them, I hope they will forgive me for the harm I may have inflicted on you by telling you exactly what happened.”

“Whoever said that childhood is the happiest time of your life is a liar, or a fool.”

“He was rather clumsy and shy and looked as if he'd spent the last ten years of his life locked up in a library - hardly the kind of man any girl your age dreams of ...”

“The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ...”

“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.”

“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.”

“Ben invented mathematical theories that even he didn't manage to remember and wrote such bizarre tales of adventure that he ended up destroying them a week after they were finished, embarrassed at the thought that he had penned them.”

“As he took them in his arms, the crying of the babies permeated the night like a trail of blood calling out to a predator.”

“I would have preferred someone else to have been in charge of rescuing this story, but once again life has taught me that my role is to be a witness, not the leading actor.”

“Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.”

“Wine turns the wise man into a fool and the fool into a wise man.”

“There are people you remember and people you dream of.”

“Nobody can feel more compassion for a fibber than another fibber.”

“O caminho para o Inferno é feito de boas intenções.”

“Quem não sabe para onde vai não chega a parte nenhuma.”

“Ik dankte de hemel dat er geen getuigen waren van mijn blos, die voldoende zou zijn geweest om een sigaar op een halve meter afstand te doen ontbranden.”

“Mi amigo Óscar es uno de estos príncipes sin reino que corren por ahí esperando que los beses para transformarse en sapo. Lo entiende todo al revés y por eso me gusta tanto. La gente que piensa que lo entiende todo a derechas hace las cosas a izquierdas,y eso, viniendo de una zurda,lo dice todo. Me mira y se cree que no lo veo. Imagina que me evaporaré si me toca y que,si no lo hace,se va a evaporar él. Me tiene en un pedestal tan alto que no sabe cómo subirse. Piensa que mis labios son la puerta del paraíso,pero no sabe que están envenenados. Yo soy tan cobarde que,por no perderle,no se lo digo. Finjo que no le veo y que sí,que me voy a evaporar...Mi amigo Óscar es uno de estos príncipes que harían bien manteniéndose alejados de los cuentos y de las princesas que lo habitan. No sabe que es el príncipe azul quien tiene que besar a la bella durmiente para que despierte de su sueño eterno,pero eso es porque Óscar ignora que todos los cuentos son mentiras,aunque no todas las mentiras son cuentos.Los príncipes no son azules y las durmientes, aunque sean bellas, nunca despiertan de su sueño. Es el mejor amigo que nunca he tenido y, si algún día me tropiezo con Merlín,le daré las gracias por haberlo cruzado en mi camino.”

“Običajno je tako, da več ko ima nekdo daru, bolj dvomi o tem, ali ga ima. In obratno.”

“!A televisão, amigo Daniel, é o Anticristo, e digo-lhe que bastarão três ou quatro gerações para que as pessoas não saibam nem dar peidos por sua conta...”

“O homem, como bom símio, é um animal social e imperam nele o amiguismo, o nepotismo, a trapaça e a mexeriquice comonorma intrínseca de conduta ética. É pura biologia.”

“By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.”

“I swallowed, feeling my pulse race, and gave silent thanks that there were no eyewitnesses to my blushing, which could have set a cigar alight even a foot away.”

“Pocas cosas marcan tanto a un lector como el primer libro que realmente se abre camino hasta su corazón. Aquellas primeras imágenes, el eco de esas palabras que creemos haber dejado atrás, nos acompañan toda la vida y esconden un palacio en nuestra memoria al que, tarde o temprano –no importa cuántos libros leamos, cuántos mundos descubramos, cuánto aprendamos u olvidemos–, vamos a regresar.”

“Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.”

“Don't you feel like a little glass of rum? It's Cuban, like all the good stuff that kills you.”

“Recorrí pasillos y galerías en espiral pobladas por cientos, miles de tomos que parecían saber más acerca de mí que yo de ellos. Al poco, me asaltó la idea de que tras la cubierta de cada uno de aquellos libros se abría un universo infinito por explorar y de que, más allá de aquellos muros, el mundo dejaba pasar la vida en tardes de fútbol y seriales de radio, satisfecho con ver hasta allí donde alcanza su ombligo y poco más. Quizá fue aquel pensamiento, quizá el azar o su pariente de gala, el destino, pero en aquel mismo instante supe que ya había elegido el libro que iba a adoptar. O quizá debiera decir el libro que me iba a adoptar a mí. Se asomaba tímidamente en el extremo de una estantería, encuadernado en piel de color vino y susurrando su título en letras doradas que ardían a la luz que destilaba la cúpula desde lo alto. Me acerqué hasta él y acaricié las palabras con la yema de los dedos, leyendo en silencio.La Sombra del VientoJULIÁN CARAX.”

“La gente normal trae hijos al mundo; los novelistas traemos libros. Estamos condenados a dejarnos la vida en ellos aunque casi nunca lo agradezcan. Estamos condenados a morir en sus páginas y a veces hasta dispuestos a dejar que sean ellos quienes acaben por quitarnos la vida.”

“How many lost souls do You need, Lord, to satisfy Your hunger? the hatter asked. God, in His infinite silence, looked at him without blinking.”

“People eyed one another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.”

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

“You women listen more to your heart and less to all the nonsense. That's why you live longer.”

“I leaned over to cover him with the blanket he had been promising to give away to charity for years, and I kissed his forehead, as if by doing so I could protect him from the invisible threads that kept him away from me, from that tiny apartment, and from my memories. As if I believed that with that kiss I could deceive time and convince it to pass us by, to return some other day, some other life.”

“Contrary to what you believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch.”

“Ein guter Freund hat einmal zu mir gesagt, die Probleme seien wie Kakerlaken." Immer wenn er ernst sein sollte, verfiel er in einen scherzhaften Ton. "Wenn man sie ans Licht holt, erschrecken sie und machen sich auf und davon.”

“Da taeuscht du dich. Hier liegen die Erinnerungen Hunderter von Menschen, ihre Leben, Gefühle, Illusionen, ihre Abwesenheit, die Traeume, die sie nie verwirklichen konnten, die Enttaeuschungen, Irrtuemer und unerwiderten Lieben, die ihnen das Leben vergiftet haben. All das ist hier - auf immer festgehalten." Ich schaute sie neugierig und ein wenig befangen an, ich wusste nicht genau, wovon sie eigentlich sprach. Für sie war es jedenfalls wichtig. "Man kann vom Leben nichts verstehen, solange man den Tod nicht versteht", sagte sie.”

“Geduld ist die Mutter der Wissenschaft", entgegnete sie. "Und die Patin des Wahnsinns".”

“Wir alle haben im Dachgeschoss der Seele ein Geheimnis unter Verschluss.”