Megan > Megan's Quotes

“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.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"
“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“To truly hate is an art one learns with time.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Time goes faster the more hollow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don’t stop at your station.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Few things leave a deeper mark on the reader, than the first book that finds its way to his heart.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“...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.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“One loves truly only once in a lifetime, Julian, even if one isn’t aware of it.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“So long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“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, The Shadow of the Wind

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened,”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Julian once wrote that coincidences are the scars of fate. There are no coincidences, Daniel. We are puppets of our subconscious desires.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely. It could give me back the sight I had lost. For that reason alone, a book that didn't matter to anyone changed my life.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

“There are worse prisons than words.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Well, this is a story about books."

About books?"

About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind."

You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel."

That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“After a while it occurred to me that between the covers of each of those books lay a boundless universe waiting to be discovered while beyond those walls, in the outside world, people allowed life to pass by in afternoons of football and radio soaps, content to do little more than gaze at their navels.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Jacinta never told Penelope that she loved her. The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind