Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“... und in der schwärzesten Nacht meines Lebens sah ich Sterne.”

“What the flower vendor interpreted as 'pretty nasty'was only the intensity that comes to those who, better late than never, have found apurpose in life and are pursuing it to make up for lost time.”

“somethings can only be seen in the shadows”

“Quien quiere de verdad quiere en silencio, con hechos, nunca con palabras.”

“Conserva tus sueños, nunca sabes cuando te harán falta.”

“Never trust he who trusts everyone.”

“And here I was thinking you were a bit slow, what with so much asking and not knowing anything.”

“It might have been that notion, or just chance, or its more flamboyant relative, destiny.”

“Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.”

“Disarmed, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you've deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.”

“She wore an ivory-white dress and held the world in her eyes. I barely remember thepriest's words or the faces of the guests, full of hope, who filled the church on that Marchmorning. All that remains in my memory is the touch of her lips and, when I half openedmy eyes, the secret oath I carried with me and would remember all the days of my life.”

“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 labryinth 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 to win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.”

“Viviamo nel ricordo di chi ci ama”

“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.”

“I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.”

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

“Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.”

“Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.”

“He would have liked to know that somebody wanted to keep him alive, that someone remembered him. He used to say that we exist as long as somebody remembers us.”

“The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.”

“I miss having a villain. Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely the better.”

“It's the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.”

“I bent over her and kissed her lips. She embraced me, and we remained like that as the light from the candle sputtered then went out.”

“Go to hell, I whispered. The night darker than ever, leaned in against the window panes.”

“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.”

“I recommend readers to be adventurous and to try things they’ve never heard of or considered reading before. Get out of the comfort zone and discover something new and exciting. If you’d never be caught dead in the mystery section go and read some George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly or many others. If you only read thrillers get deep into the literary fiction aisle and let yourself be seduced. If you only read non-fiction pick up a Ian McDonald novel or a Joyce Carol Oates novel. If you only read comic books, get acquainted with the great Charles Dickens or a certain Monsieur Dumas. Pick up something at random and read a page. Feel the texture of the language, the architecture of the imagery, the perfume of the style… There’s so much beauty, intelligence and excitement to be had between the pages of the books waiting for you at your local bookstore the only thing you need to bring is an open mind and a sense of adventure. Disregard all prejudices, all pre-conceived notions and all the rubbish some people try to make you think. Think for yourself. Regarding books or anything in life. Think for yourself.”

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

“Coincidences are the scars of fate.”

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened,”

“Memories are worse than bullets.”

“She was seventeen, her entire life shining on her lips.”

“vous avez poison au coeur”

“But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.”

“...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.”

“That day was turning out to be longer than The Brothers Karamazov.”

“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.”

“Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.”

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”

“Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”

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

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

“When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”

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

“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”

“To truly hate is an art one learns with time.”

“Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I wondered what on earth she saw in me that could make her want to befriend me, other than a pale reflection of herself, an echo of solitude and loss. In my ..reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and second hand dreams”