Carlos Ruiz Zafon Quotes

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.

A man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man. The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them. They like a man who expresses their own superficial thoughts in a manner that appears to be profound. This enables them to feel that they are themselves profound.

There are a million examples of not feeling the jazz, but using the jazz.

In a world of more brilliance words don't mean anything.

The false man is more false to himself than to any one else. He may despoil others, but himself is the chief loser. The world's scorn he might sometimes forget, but the knowledge of his own perfidy is undying.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar - that I call an achievement.

He (Intellectuals) claims that label to compensate for his own inadequacies. It's as old as that saying: tell me what you boast of and I'll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as excessively devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant and the feeble-minded as intellectual.

That's what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but ifyou dare to ask a question, they don't know anything.

Science is a way to not fool ourselves.

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed extremely hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces. The man who'd introduced them didn't much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.

I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.

All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.

Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.

I am surrounded by flatterers and fools. It can drive a man to madness,.. . Half of them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the other half can’t find it.

People make fools out of themselves in all sorts of ways. No particular qualifications or particular criteria are necessary.

Really, according to the shrinks, I am angry at everyone ever. Especially them. I am all anger and resentment all the time. Not one of them has ever suggested that maybe I lie because the world is better the way I tell it.

Never underestimate the role pretension plays when it comes to creating euphemistic language.

Sydney had been horrified to discover my home library consisted of a bartending dictionary and an old copy of Esquire, and at her pleading, I'd promised to read something more substantial. I was trying to think deep thoughts as I read Gatsby, but mostly I wanted to throw some parties.

She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.

The world consists of imaginary people, claiming imaginary virtues and suffering from imaginary happiness.

There is a pleasure in affecting affectation.

Where in this small-talking world can I find A longitude with no platitude?

Flattery makes fools of the best of us.