Quotes by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldnt help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in that endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

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.

He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design.You say this as if you envied him.There are worse prisons than words.

There are worse prisons than words.

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 its pages, its 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 readers hands, a new spirit...

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.

Books hold no passports. Theres only one true literary tradition: the human.

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.

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

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

Never before had I felt trapped, so seduced and caught up in a story, Clara explained, the way I did with that book. Until then, reading was just a duty, a sort of fine one had to pay teachers and tutors without quite knowing why. I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty, and the mystery of fiction and language. For me all those things were born with that novel. This is a world of shadows, Daniel, and magic is a rare asset. 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 didnt matter to anyone, changed my life.

Aryami Boses 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.

... 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 have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory

Dont be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.

I dont suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I dont trust people who say they have a lot of friends. Its a sure sign that they dont really know anyone.

Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friends latent conversational and social skills.Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. Thats the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior.

Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.... We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what weve seen, what weve done, what weve learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.

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

Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.

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