Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes - Page 4

Once you lost all hope, time began to go faster and the senseless days deadened your soul.

Coincidences are the scars of fate.

The only use for military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population," he would remark. "And that can be discovered in the first two weeks; there's no need for two years. Army, Marriage, the Church and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, go on, laugh.

Do you know what religion is, Martin, my friend? -I can barely remember Lord's Prayer. -A beautiful and well-crafted prayer. Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends,myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values , and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society.

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.

His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.

Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.

One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.

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.

There was no more good or evil in this world than we imagine there to be, either out of greed or out of innocence. Or sometimes madness.

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.

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

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

We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them.

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.

Who are the lunatics? The ones who see horror in the heart of their fellow humans and search for peace at any price? Or the ones who pretend they don't see what's going on around them? The world belongs either to lunatics or hypocrites. There are no other races on this earth. You must choose which one to belong to.

Not evil. Moronic, which isn't quite the same thing. Evil presupposes a moral decision, intention, and some forethought. A moron or a lout, however, doesn't stop to think or reason. He acts on instinct, like a stable animal, convinced he's doing good, that he's always right, and sanctimoniously proud to go around f***ing up ... anyone he perceives to be different from himself, be it because of skin color, creed, language, nationality, or ... leisure habits. What the world needs is more thoroughly evil people and fewer borderline pigheads.

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.

That afternoon the sky was scattered with black clouds galloping in from the sea and clustering over the city. Flashes of lightening echoed on the horizon and a charged warm wind smelling of dust announced a powerful summer storm. When I reached the station I noticed the first few drops, shiny and heavy, like coins falling from heaven...Night seemed to fall suddenly, interrupted only by the lightning now bursting over the city, leaving a trail of noise and fury.

I don't belong to any side. What's more, I think flags are nothing but painted rags that represent rancid emotions. Just seeing someone wrapped up in one of them, spewing out hymns, badges and speeches, gives me the runs. I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself

Well, this is a story about books." About books?" About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind." You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel." That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.

He (Intellectuals) claims that label to compensate for his own 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 excessively devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant and the feeble-minded as intellectual.

Everything in life in nonsense. it's just a question of persepctive

We exist as long as somebody remembers us.

We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music