Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

If I could know me, I could know the universe.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.

One of the things that I've come to understand is that as I talk a lot about Picard, what I find is that I'm talking about myself.

You are what you've been looking for. The answer is always in you alone. There is nothing in the external world. For the external world is an emanation of your own mind, your own thinking and your own imagination. You created this world.

It's okay to ask questions, but get the answers. So, where are the answers? Since the questions came from within you, guess where the answers are? Within you.

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.

I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

Books simply help you to see what is already within your self. That's what enlightenment is all about.

Why do you want to read others' books when there is the book of yourself?

Know thyself, for through thyself only thou canst know God.

We use books like mirrors, gazing into them only to discover ourselves.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

Only within yourself exists the other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

Access to your true essence will give you insight into the mirror of relationship, because all relationship is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.

He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books.

After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.

To know yourself you need not go to any book, to any priest, to any psychologist. The whole treasure is within yourself.

You may go on reading any number of books on Meditation. They can only tell you ‘Realize the Self’. The Self cannot be found in books. You have to find it for yourself in yourself.

We must remember that knowledge of one’s own deep nature is also simultaneously knowledge of human nature in general.

No matter where you go, you always see yourself in the rearview mirror.

Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.

Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.