Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Her tiny and organized handwriting reminded me of the tidiness of her desk, as if she'd wanted to find in words the peace and safety that life hadn't wanted to grant her.

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.

If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.

Don Ricardo wanted a successor worthy of himself. Jorge would always be cocooned in the privileges of his class, hiding from his mediocrity in creature comforts. Penelope, the beautiful Penelope, was a woman, and therefore a treasure, not a treasurer. Julian, who had the soul of a poet, and therefore the soul of a murderer, fulfilled all the requirements. It was only a question of time.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

- Boys my age are boring. They have nothing to say and half of them seem like complete idiots.I was going to say that they didn't improve with age but didn't want to spoil her illusions.

He let the hours go by lost in the magic of words, shedding his skin and his name, feeling like another person. He allowed himself to be carried away by the dreams of shadowy characters, the only refuge left for him.

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.

Everyone wanted to see [him] fall so they could devour his remains. As is usually the case, the army of sycophants had turned into a horde of hungry hyenas

I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even though we don't understand it.

He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to

History is biology's dumping ground

You don't win a game by hitting the ball out of the court.

It is a part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means, be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our lives, or the absence of meaning. These are basic and extremely simple aspects of existence, but our limitations prevent us from responding in an unequivocal way and for that reason we generate an emotional response, as a defense mechanism. It's pure biology.

Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table, your bottom on the chair and you start sweating. Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts. That's called inspiration.

1My father says a hunch is your brain__ way of taking a short cut to the truth,_ replied Max.__e__ a wise man, your father. What else does he say?___hat the more you try to hide from the truth, the quicker it finds you.

The same thing that had happened with the flowers was happening with my longing: once I held it in my hands, I didn't know where to put it.

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.