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Carlos Ruiz Zafón Biography

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“It's possible, and I stress possible, that such a moment may never come: you may not fall in love, you may not be able to or you may not wish to give your whole life to anyone, and, like me, you may turn forty-five one day and realize that you're no longer young and you have never found a choir of cupids with lyres or a bed of white roses leading to the altar. The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh - a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, beginning with beauty and ending with memory.”

LoveLifePassion
Book:The Angel's Game
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“When it comes to lying, what one must consider is not the plausibility of the fib but the greed, fear, and stupidity of the receiver. One never lies to people; they lie to themselves. A good liar gives fools what they want to hear and allows them to free themselves from the facts at hand and choose the level of self-delusion that fits their foolishness and moral turpitude.”

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Book:El laberinto de los espíritus
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“Without further ado I left the place, finding my route by the marks I had made on the way in. 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 couldn't 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.”

UniverseSadnessBooksLibraryMemoryShadow Of The WindCarlos Ruiz ZafonThe Cemetery Of Forgotten Books
Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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“Stories have no beginning and no end, only doors through which one may enter them. A story is an endless labyrinth of words, images and spirits, conjured up to show us the invisible truth about ourselves. A story is, after all, a conversation between the narrator and the reader, and just as narrators can only relate as far as their ability will permit, so too readers can only read as far as what is already written in their souls.”

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Book:El laberinto de los espíritus
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“An intellectual is usually someone who isn't exactly distinguished by his intellect," Corelli asserted. "he claims that label to compensate for his inadequacies. It's as old as that saying : "Tell me what you boast of and I'll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant, and the feeble-minded as intellectual. Once again, it's all the work of nature. Far from being the sylph to whom poets sing, nature is a cruel, voracious mother who needs to feed on the creatures she gives birth to in order to stay alive.”

Human Nature
Book:The Angel's Game
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“Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war, Daniel. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've 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. p. 428”

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Book:The Shadow Of The Wind
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“Nada alimenta el olvido como una guerra, Daniel. Todos callamos y se esfuerzan en convencernos de lo que hemos visto, lo que hemos hecho, lo que hemos aprendido de nosotros mismos y de los demás, es una ilusión, una pesadilla pasajera. Las guerras no tienen memoria y nadie se atreve a comprenderlas hasta que ya no quedan voces para contar lo que pasó, hasta que llega el momento en que no se las reconoce y regresan, con otra cara y otro nombre, a devorar lo que dejaron atrás.”

WarSpainGuerraIn Spanish
Book:The Shadow Of The Wind
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