“I don't suppose you have many friends. Neither do I. I don't trust people who say they have a lot of friends. It's a sure sign that they don't really know anyone.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“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.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Don't be afraid of being scared. To be afraid is a sign of common sense. Only complete idiots are not afraid of anything.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe these to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude - and destroy if possible - those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Do you know the best thing about broken hearts? They can only really break once the rest is just scratches.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Silence makes idiots seem wise even for a minute.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn't go away.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“We all give up great expectations along the way.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Nothing important is learned; it is simply remembered.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Literature, at least good literature, is science tempered with the blood of art. Like architecture or music.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“I decided that my existence would be one of books and silence.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“I turned you into a stranger in order to forget you and now I'm the stranger.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“I'm not talking to anyone, I'm delivering a monologue. It's the inebriated man's prerogative.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Nothing is fair. The most one can hope is for things to be logical. Justice is a rare illness in a world that is otherwise a picture of health.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“You end up becoming someone you see in the eyes of those you love.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“May I offer you something? A small glass of cyanide?”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
“Everything is a tale, Martin. What we believe, what we know, what we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, quote from The Angel's Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Born place: in Barcelona, Spain
Born date September 25, 1964
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“The sky had cleared, and now the sun was overhead, already baking the wet ground so that you could see the humidity drifting lazily above the cotton stalks.”
― John Grisham, quote from A Painted House
“I took a photo of us, mid-embrace. When I am old and alone I will remember that I once held something truly beautiful.”
― Joe Dunthorne, quote from Submarine
“Abuse? Ah. Such problems, even with time, do not go away on their own. They must be addressed.”
― Nikki Sex, quote from Abuse
“...And yet a knowledge
is here that tenses the throat
as for song: the inheritance
of the ones, alive or once
alive, who stand behind
the ones I have imagined,
who took into their minds
the troubles of this place,
blights of love and race,
but saw a good fate here
and willingly paid its cost,
kept it the best they could,
thought of its good,
and mourned the good they lost.
(From the ending of Where in Clearing, p179)”
― Wendell Berry, quote from The Collected Poems, 1957-1982
“there are some experiences and intimations which scar too deeply to permit of healing, and leave only such an added sensitiveness that memory reinspires all the original horror.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror
Second Helpings
Joan of Arc
A Painted House
Submarine
Abuse
The Collected Poems,...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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