Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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.Collection: History
Mention the gothic, and many readers will probably picture gloomy castles and an assortment of sinister Victoriana. However, the truth is that the gothic genre has continued to flourish and evolve since the days of Bram Stoker, producing some of its most interesting and accomplished examples in the 20th century - in literature, film and beyond.Collection: Truth
I've always thought that we are what we remember, and the less we remember, the less we are.
Shirley Jackson's writings are a must for aficionados of the gothic and of good literature.
My work as a screenwriter has influenced my fiction. Writing screenplays forces you to consider many elements regarding story structure and other narrative devices that can be used to enhance the infinitely more complex demands of a novel.
There are two things that I cannot live without: music and books. Caffeine isn't dignified enough to qualify.
When 'The Shadow of the Wind' became a success I had already been a working writer, I'd been through the ups and downs, I'd seen how it worked.
I always had this childhood image in the back of my mind of this fantastic place where all the things I liked came from; Orson Welles, jazz, all that stuff. Los Angeles is one of those places where somebodies become nobodies and nobodies become somebody.
The haunting of history is ever present in Barcelona. I see cities as organisms, as living creatures. To me, Madrid is a man and Barcelona is a woman. And it's a woman who's extremely vain.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is like the greatest, most fantastic library you could ever imagine. It's a labyrinth of books with tunnels, bridges, arches, secret sections - and it's hidden inside an old palace in the old city of Barcelona.
I spend a lot of time in L.A., and when it rains there you get the entire rainfall for the year in two days, raindrops the size of mangoes. And in Barcelona, the Mediterranean storms come up from the sea, thunder and lightning; it's like the end of the world.
I always felt that I was a writer, that was what I had to do.
I've always ignored the labels people put on things.
I'm interested in everything. I don't see why Borges can't work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can't be mixed with Balzac. It's just storytelling; it's different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.
I realised that I had always been writing things that other people wanted me to write and not what I really wanted to write, so I felt like I was losing my way.
In Los Angeles you get the sense sometimes that there's a mysterious patrol at night: when the streets are empty and everyone's asleep, they go erasing the past. It's like a bad Ray Bradbury story - 'The Memory Erasers'.
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a metaphor, not just for books but for ideas, for language, for knowledge, for beauty, for all the things that make us human, for collecting memory.
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.
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.
I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic.
My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.
A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.
The success of 'The Shadow of the Wind' made me very happy, but it did not change my perspective or the way I was.
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.
There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.Collection: Things In Life
Everything can be forgiven in this world, save telling the truth.Collection: World
We all give up great expectations along the way.Collection: Giving Up
The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.Collection: Children
It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies.Collection: Ideas
Destiny doesn't do home visits... you have to go for it yourself.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Inspirational
Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.Collection: Dream
Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.Collection: Wise
...until that moment I had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, and that that was why I had taken refuge in it until it became confused with my own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger.Collection: Lonely
Waiting is the rust of the soul.Collection: Waiting
Few things are more deceptive than memories.Collection: Memories
somethings can only be seen in the shadowsCollection: Shadow
It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.Collection: Reality
There are people you remember and people you dream of.Collection: Dream
One mustn't dream of one's future; one must earn it.Collection: Dream
Time has taught me not to lose hope, yet not to trust too much in hope either.Collection: Time
People with a meagre soul always try to make others feel small too.Collection: People
Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.Collection: Remember
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.Collection: True Friend
It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.Collection: Up To You
I don't care what happens in 100 years. I won't be around.Collection: Years
A good friend once told me that the problems are like cockroaches. If drawn to light, they'll get scared.Collection: Good Friend
Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.Collection: Believe
I was secretly convinced that with such a marvel one would be able to write anything, from novels to encyclopedias, and letters whose supernatural power would surpass any postal limitations--a letter written with that pen would reach the most remote corners of the world, even that unknowable place to which my father said my mother had gone and from where she would never return.Collection: Mother
In this world the only opinion that holds court is prejudice.Collection: Prejudice