Carlos Ruiz Zafon Character Quotations

The only way you can truly get to know an author is through the trail of ink he leaves behind him. The person you think you see is only an empty character: truth is always hidden in fiction.

It is difficult to hate an idea. That requires a certain intellectual discipline and a slightly obsessive, sick mind. There aren’t too many of those. It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group. . .anything.

I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.

Everything is a tale, Martin. What we believe, what we know, what we remember, even what we dream. Everything is a story, a narrative, a sequence of events with characters communicating an emotional content. We only accept as true what can be narrated.

As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells.

His soul is in his stories. I once asked him who inspired him to create his characters, and his answer was no one. That all his characters were himself.