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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

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Age: 55 †
Born: 1964
Born: September 25
Died: 2020
Died: June 19
Novelist
Publicist
Screenwriter
Barcelona
Spain
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Language
Collecting
Ideas
Metaphor
Human
Forgotten
Humans
Memory
Book
Memories
Make
Books
Things
Beauty
Knowledge
Cemetery

More quotes by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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You end up becoming someone you see in the eyes of those you love.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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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
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We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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There are people you remember and people you dream of.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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God gives us life, but the world's landlord is the devil.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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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
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The teachers tried everything, even pleading, but Tomas was in the habit of addressing them only in Latin, a language he spoke with papal fluency and in which he did not stammer. Sooner or later they all resigned in despair, fearing he might be possessed: he might be spouting demonic instructions in Aramaic at them, for all they knew.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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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.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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Sometimes, in difficult circumstances, one can confuse compassion with love.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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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
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It's curious how easy it is to tell a piece of paper what you don't dare say to someone's face.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality, at least for human beings. We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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The most despicable humans are the ones who always feel virtuous and look down on the rest of the world.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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One is never wholly conscious of the greed hidden in one's heart until one hears the sweet sound of silver.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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There are times and places where not to be anyone is more honourable than to be someone.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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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 Zafon
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Making money isn't hard in itself... What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon