Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

And even though people like to furrow their brow like they suspect you're not being honest about yourself, the truth is that they worry that you're not serving their idea of you.

There are quite a few honest songwriters out there writing about relationships and their own personality traits. But for some reason, once they step out of the bedroom, their honesty doesn't seem to come with them.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won't let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, 'Here I am. This is me.' I feel there's something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Real intimacy is only possible to the degree that we can be honest about what we are doing and feeling.

My best advice would be that you have to be vulnerable with each other. Like, everyone says you have to be honest, you have to communicate; like, yes, of course, but you gotta be willing to be vulnerable.

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

Even though I was 34 or 35 or something. I was like, “People can do that? Women can actually just say what they think?” It was an extraordinary experience to do that movie with her because every day was a lesson in how to just be yourself.

I'm not going to try and change how people perceive me. I think it's important to be a contradiction. People are contradictions; everyone has contradictions. So I don't expect anyone to look at me differently.

When people can be vulnerable to one another then you're kind of giving people permission to really be yourself and not try to impress all the time and you get into more interesting work. You're being real and you're not afraid to mess up or seem weird.

Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it, but, it is troubling.

I don't like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody's confidence. If one's actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.

When you're talking to a person, it only matters what they are perceiving. You only need them to perceive you as a loving husband. You don't necessarily need to be one. That's always a good road, if you actually are one. But what people are perceiving will dictate what their life is, and ultimately what your interaction is.

I think there's a little bit of idiot in everybody and I think some people cover it better than others but I think I am very much a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.

I don't really care what people think about me if they don't let me see it.

When I can really open myself up to someone and show someone who I really am, it's amazing when it happens.

The nicer I am, the more people think I'm lying.

Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?

People do seem to think that I'm going to be some wicked witch, and then they're always surprised to find out I'm just a little clumsy nerd.

I heard this wonderful quote - "Only the brave show what they love." It's so-embarrassing to approach somebody and say you want to look at them. But without that risk taking, nothing can happen, so I have to make myself vulnerable. What I think is the unifying aspect in people that I like is that they have a sense of their own vulnerability, and I respond to that.

I don't really care so much what people say about me because it usually is a reflection of who they are. For example, if people wish I would sound like I used to sound, then it says more about them than it does me.

I'm not one to hide anything, but I don't feel the need to comment directly on [my relationships]... I think it would be a shame to not live in the moment and not enjoy everything that's happening in fear of other people's opinions.

That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.

You can't really control how people are going to feel about you; all you can really do is be yourself. Because if you seduce somebody, and you seduce them by pretending to be a certain way, once they are seduced they are going to find that you are not that way. And then you have to maintain an image that's not real, so you really screw yourself. The best is to be yourself and hope they like you.

People can try to make me into anything they want, but I think they're really throwing around language but saying the same thing.