Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

The grave is a crucible where memory is purified; we only remember a dead friend by those qualities which make him regretted.

What the dead don't know piles up, though we don't notice it at first. They don't know how we're getting along without them, of course, dealing with the hours and days that now accrue so quickly, and, unless they divined this somehow in advance, they don't know that we don't want this inexorable onslaught of breakfasts and phone calls and going to the bank, all this stepping along, because we don't want anything extraneous to get in the way of what we feel about them or the ways we want to hold them in mind.

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?

When a man has died, he wants you to know about it.

I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.

When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead. we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something...I don't know...even an earring

In death, lie. In living, cry. Carry me home to remember to be remembered.

There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.

In our memories, there is a graveyard where we bury our dead. They all lie there together, the loved ones and the ones we hated, friends and foes and kin, with no distinction among them. We have to mourn every one of them, because our memories have made them as much a part of us as our bones or our skin. If we don't, we've no right to remember anything at all.

Funerals...are for the living.

Just because someone's dead doesn't mean it's over. My grandfather died more than 25 years ago, but I still think of him a lot and smell his smell.

The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.

It's very inconvenient because every time I finish, let's say, a chapter of a book, I think I'm going to ring Richard and then realize: Oh, Christ, I've buried him. I buried him last year.

I suppose the things you remember about someone who has died are the funny moments. Those are the ones that stand out.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.

Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.

Funerals prove that someone is really gone.

The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory.

People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.

It's too late to fall in love with Sharon Tate / But it's too soon to ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb.

The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.

Tell me the truth about death. I don't know what it is. We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down.

The bustle in a house The morning after death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon earth,-- The sweeping up the heart, And putting love away We shall not want to use again Until eternity

Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. - "Indian Boy Love Song #1