Top 200 Carlos Ruiz Zafón Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2. “So long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

3. “Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

4. “There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

5. “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. Its a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections – and its hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

6. “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

7. “There’s no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

8. “Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

9. “Deep down we’ve never been who we think we once were, and we only remember what never happened.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

10. “Never trust anyone, Daniel, especially the people you admire. Those are the ones who will make you suffer the worst blows.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

11. “Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

12. “It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

14. “Quien quiere de verdad quiere en silencio, con hechos, nunca con palabras.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

15. “The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

16. “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

17. “Do you know the best thing about broken hearts? They can only really break once the rest is just scratches.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

18. “There are two things that I cannot live without: music and books. Caffeine isn’t dignified enough to qualify.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

19. “Over time, loneliness gets inside you and doesn’t go away.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

20. “Envy is the religion of the mediocre.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

21. “Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

22. “A Gentleman’s agreement cannot be broken without breaking the person who has entered into it.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

24. “Remember me, even if it’s only in a corner and secretly. Don’t let me go.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

25. “It’s up to you how you waste your time and money. I’m staying here to read: life’s too short.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

26. “The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you’ve already stopped loving that person forever.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

27. “A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

28. “People with a meagre soul always try to make others feel small too.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

29. “Memories are worse than bullets.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

30. “Normal people bring children into the world; we novelists bring books. We are condemned to put our whole lives into them, even though they hardly ever thank us for it. We are condemned to die in their pages and sometimes even to let our books be the ones who, in the end, will take our lives.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

31. “Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

32. “We exist as long as somebody remembers us.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

33. “People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren’t already complicated enough.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

34. “I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

35. “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.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

36. “I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

37. “The greatest multiplex in the universe is inside your mind, and the only ticket you need is a good, well-written novel.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

38. “Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

39. “We think we understand a song’s lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

40. “Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

41. “We are puppets of our subconscious desires.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

42. “The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

43. “It’s the student who makes the teacher, not the other way around.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

44. “For some reason, I never felt the need to have kids. My wife feels the same. We don’t feel a void. I don’t think they would give my life meaning. I do think of the books as my children, though. Whatever is inside of me, I put into my books.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

45. “When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

46. “Delving into the past had unveiled a cruel lesson – that in the book of life it is perhaps best not to turn back pages; it was a path on which, whatever direction we took, we’d never be able to choose our own destiny.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

47. “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

48. “One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

49. “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

50. “While you’re working, you don’t have to look life in the eye.”

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón