“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
See more on GoodReads
“When we look at clouds we see different shapes. See all the grace you can.”
― S.A.R.K., quote from Succulent Wild Woman
“I want to be happy. To make someone else happy. To do my job well, be a good person”
― Harriet Evans, quote from Happily Ever After
“When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a great pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen a fairy.”
― J.M. Barrie, quote from The Little White Bird
“You and your group of nerds fall into a pit and it's full of dynamite and you blow up. The End.”
― Jeff Kinney, quote from Diary of a Wimpey Kid: Roderick Rules
“I dinnae say I might paint when I grow up. I dinnae say I’ll learn French, so I can read every book in the main library in Paris one day, including encyclopedias and obscure manuals. I dinnae say I’ll volunteer to help some old lady with her shopping, and her cleaning, and if I’m really fucking lucky she’ll take me under her wing and get tae like me and feed me apple pie and gin—and tell me all her stories about the good old days. Those urnay the things I say. We stop at the traffic lights. There’s a bunch of girls about my age standing there, but they dinnae look like me. They look young. I turn the music up, sneakers off, feet on the dash. I light a fag and look out the window at one of the girls. She’s got great legs, really slim but nice. She turns around, laughing tae her pal, and her smile is stunning. “I’d shag that,” I say, and flick my ash away.”
― Jenni Fagan, quote from The Panopticon
Old Yeller
Cujo
The Wasp Factory
Born at Midnight
The Red and the Blac...
Stolen: A Letter to...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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
