Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them. Carlos Ruiz Zafon More Quotes by Carlos Ruiz Zafon More Quotes From Carlos Ruiz Zafon I wondered what on earth she saw in me that could make her want to befriend me, other than a pale reflection of herself, an echo of solitude and loss. In my ..reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and second hand dreams Carlos Ruiz Zafon dream loss book Whether we realise it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favouring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Carlos Ruiz Zafon realising easier way A book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us. Carlos Ruiz Zafon shadow-of-the-wind mirrors book It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it. Carlos Ruiz Zafon hard-work writing book It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality. Carlos Ruiz Zafon states impossible reality 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 Zafon book children people Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven. Carlos Ruiz Zafon fire heaven fall Driven by a wish to save Tomás from a life of penury and misunderstanding, Fermin had decided that he needed to develop my friend's latent conversational and social skills. Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption, and gossip. That's the intrinsic blueprint for our ethical behavior. Carlos Ruiz Zafon skills animal men All true stories begin and end in a cemetery" - The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon shadow stories wind Human nature provides the lyrics, and we novelists just compose the music. Carlos Ruiz Zafon novelists human-nature writing Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they're all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realise that most of them are rotten inside. Carlos Ruiz Zafon smell hot men 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. Carlos Ruiz Zafon rays night past There are worse prisons than words. Carlos Ruiz Zafon prison With women, the best part is the discovery. There's nothing like the first time, nothing. You don't know what life is until you undress a woman for the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter's night. Carlos Ruiz Zafon winter sweet night A piece of literature can be many things but first of all it must capture its audience. You need to seduce people, entice them into a world of beauty and horror, light and shadow, of passion, of romance, of mystery. That's the magic of it. Beyond that, of course, you can open a dialogue about the ideas which interest you, but first of all you absolutely must get inside people's minds. Carlos Ruiz Zafon passion light ideas They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them. Carlos Ruiz Zafon dying men boys I like to believe that storytelling transcends age limitations. Carlos Ruiz Zafon storytelling age believe ... deep down nobody is bad, only frightened. Carlos Ruiz Zafon deep-down frightened I don't belong to any side. What's more, I think flags are nothing but painted rags that represent rancid emotions. Just seeing someone wrapped up in one of them, spewing out hymns, badges and speeches, gives me the runs. I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself Carlos Ruiz Zafon sheep running thinking Envy is the religion of the mediocre Carlos Ruiz Zafon envy mediocre