Carlos Ruiz Zafon Children Quotations

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.

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.

I was very bored at school. I found it very easy and slow and grey. My teachers didn't really know how to handle me, because I was very sarcastic. I was over-confident, arrogant, a typical youngest child. I went through periods of withdrawing into myself and school psychologists tried to figure me out, work out why I didn't fit in. I found that irritating, too.

In those days, Christmas still retained a certain aura of magic and mystery. The powdery light of winter, the hopeful expressions of people who lived among shadows and silence, lent that setting a slight air of promise in which at least children and those who had learned the art of forgetting could still believe.

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.

A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.