An intellectual is usually someone who isn't exactly distinguished by his intellect," Carelli 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 presents 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.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Aryami Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and paintings, but the specter of thousands of memories imprisoned between its walls still permeated the house.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As he took them in his arms, the crying of the babies permeated the night like a trail of blood calling out to a predator.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As it unfolded, the structure of the story began to remind me of one of those Russian dolls that contain innumerable ever-smaller dolls within. Step by step the narrative split into a thousand stories, as if it had entered a gallery of mirrors, its identity fragmented into endless reflections.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As I walked, I ran my fingers along the spines of hundreds of books. I let myself be imbued with the smell, with the light that filtered through the cracks or from the glass lanterns embedded in the wooden structure, floating among mirrors and shadows.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

As long as we are being remembered, we remain alive

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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

A young man is the perfect soldier. He has great potential for aggression and a limited critical capacity - or none at all - with which to analyze it and judge how to channel it.

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón