811 Quotes by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I am a curious creature and put my finger in as many cakes as I can: history, film, technology, etc. I'm also a freak for urban history, particularly Barcelona, Paris and New York. I know more weird stuff about 19th-century Manhattan than is probably healthy.

The wider the author's arsenal of tools and the better technically equipped the storyteller is, the better the tale will be.

I'm a voracious reader, and I like to explore all sorts of writing without prejudice and without paying any attention to labels, conventions or silly critical fads.

A big success can be very confusing if it comes too early in your life. When you are young, you are more vulnerable to vanity. I was 36 when I wrote The Shadow of the Wind and the success of it was very gradual. If you have this kind of success straight off, I think there is a danger you can become an idiot, because you don't have a perspective. It hasn't changed me a lot. I fly first class now. But those things don't change you. If I am pretentious, I was before, I haven't changed. The only thing is, I am less anxious now.

He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people... I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them - a comfortable prison of his own design." "You say this as if you envied him." "There are worse prisons than words.

I've always ignored the labels people put on things.

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

With 'The Angel's Game', there was a lot of pressure from the expectations - expectations from the book industry and from readers; it's natural.

You know who your true friends are when things go wrong for you, but the opposite is also true. When things go well, the people who really love you are happy.