Ruiz Quotes & Sayings

We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe. — Don Miguel Ruiz

By making this one agreement a habit, your whole life will be completely transformed. — Miguel Ruiz

You don't need to worship idols of the Virgin Mary, the Christ, or the Buddha. You can if you want to; if it feels good, do it. Your own body is a manifestation of God, — Miguel Ruiz

As a kid, I succumbed to peer pressure; I created an image of myself that was not true. But that belief system ended with the death of a close friend. It was then that I reached out for help from my father. It wasn't the teachings of The Four Agreements exactly, it was just my father's teachings in general. And because of this, I am grateful to continue my family's legacy. In this way, I say "thank you" to my family and teachers before me. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

It's not true for the plants or the animals. It's not true for the stars or the trees, or for the rest of nature. It's only true for humans. — Miguel Ruiz

Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. — Miguel Ruiz

Words and prayers are powerful agreements, and you need to see what kind you are using every day. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

To truly hate is an act one learns with time — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

have a good life, but you carry hell with you night and day. Like everyone else, you make yourself pay a thousand times for something you did once, and long ago. You make others pay . . . for your fear, for your knowledge." He hesitated, then gave her a hard look. "Will our love have to pay, in the end? — Miguel Ruiz

I am a night creature, and I write from midnight till dawn, secluded in my office and surrounded by my collection of dragons (I have 400 of them). I only use Macintosh computers, which I name in dynastic order. Right now I'm using MacDragon 5. Only the devil is able to decipher my handwriting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Whenever it poured like this, Max felt as if time was pausing. It was like a cease-fire during which you could stop whatever you were doing and just stand by a window for hours, watching the performance, an endless curtain of tears falling from heaven. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For me personally, I don't pray using words - it is just with my intent. Why do I need to pray with "words," to something external, when I know what I want? — Miguel Angel Ruiz

A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself. — Miguel Ruiz

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

During your whole life you practiced every moment to become what you believe you are right now. You practiced until it became automatic. And when you start practicing something new, when you change what you believe you are, your whole life is going to change. If you practice being impeccable with your word, if you don't take anything personally, if you don't make assumptions, you are going to break thousands of agreements that keep you trapped in the dream of hell. Very soon, what you agree to believe will become the choice of your authentic self, not the choice of the image of yourself that you thought you were. — Miguel Ruiz

- Boys my age are boring. They have nothing to say and half of them seem like complete idiots.
I was going to say that they didn't improve with age but didn't want to spoil her illusions. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And he realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. — Miguel Ruiz

He had spent a lifetime cleansing his mind of poison. He had searched his heart, found the corruption, and removed it. He had torn away the lies - lies he'd been told and had believed, and lies he had devised and used against himself. This was his mastery - the purification of the mind and the recovery of authenticity. This scene symbolized the mastery of death, the awakening. — Miguel Ruiz

I looked up towards the immensity of the labyrinth.
"How does one choose a single book among so many?"
Isaac shrugged his shoulders.
'Some like to believe it's the book that chooses the person ... destiny, in other words. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Life isn't like a novel, you know. In life you have to take sides. And it's clear which side you've chosen. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We set off towards the square, where a knot of old folks hovered around the local pigeon community, their lives reduced to a ritual of spreading crumbs and waiting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

And for a moment I thought there were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, and that the light that smiled on me was borrowed light, only real as long as I could hold it in my eyes, second by second. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Let us cry for the spilt milk, by all means, if by doing so we learn how to avoid spilling any more. Let us cry for the spilt milk, and remember how, and where, and why, we spilt it. Much wisdom is learnt through tears, but none by forgetting our lessons. — Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton

Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not learned to stifle with words. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

worst blows." Clara spoke these words — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When you are happy, the people around you are happy, too, and it inspires them to change their own world. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Love coming out of you makes you happy. The whole world can love you, but that love will not make you happy. What will make you happy is to share all the love you have inside you. That is the love that will make a difference. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Are you not tempted to create a story for which men and women would live and die, for which they would be capable of killing and allowing them to be killed, of sacrificing and condemning themselves, of handling over their souls? — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Nostalgia is the saddest form of glee. — Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

Mr. Aguilar belonged to that race of privileged minds who are always right. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Faith is found when one isn't looking for it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Quid quo pro - you cant get something from nothing . — Carlous Ruiz Zafon

Blaming TV as an abstract entity is nonsensical. It's our hand on the remote. There's a world out there outside the tube. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Forgiveness is an act of self-love and respect. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

The greatest multiplex in the universe is inside your mind, and the only ticket you need is a good, well-written novel. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We are the same, you and I. We are images of light. — Miguel Ruiz

The old woman smiled sweetly at Fermin. My friend stroked her face and her forehead. She appreciated the touch of another skin like a purring cat. I felt a lump in my throat.
'A stupid question, wasn't it?' Fermin went on. 'What
you'd like is to be out there, dancing a foxtrot. You look like a dancer; everyone must tell you that.'
I had never seen him treat anyone with such delicacy, not even Bernarda. His words were pure flattery, but the tone and expression on his face were sincere.
'What pretty things you say,' she murmured in a voice that was broken from not having had anyone to speak to or anything to say. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I think you judge yourself too severely, a quality that always distinguishes people of true worth. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The truth is silent. The truth doesn't come with words. It's something that I just know; it's something that I can feel without words, and it's called silent knowledge. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up. You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement. — Miguel Ruiz

He held an unlit cigar in his mouth and had more hair in each eyebrow than most people have on their entire head. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Suffering and drama begin when you lie to yourself, even if you don't realize you are lying. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

The thing is that my first novel, which was basically a mystery adventure story, won quite an important award in Spain for young adult fiction, and because of this it became a very successful book, and right now it's some sort of a standard title, it's read widely in many high schools in Spain, so I think, in a way, I was a victim of my own success in the field of young adult fiction, because it was never my own natural register. I never intended to write that kind of fiction, but I became very successful at it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Throughout the world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in the street, and tremendous injustice. — Miguel Ruiz

One of the things that has happened with technology is that it can only be helpful if it is useful, of course, but it can only be helpful too if it's accessible, and it can only be helpful if it's affordable. — Hector Ruiz

It is when we lose control that we repress the emotions, not when we are in control. — Miguel Ruiz

It is a part of our nature to survive. Faith is an instinctive response to aspects of existence that we cannot explain by any other means, be it the moral void we perceive in the universe, the certainty of death, the mystery of the origin of things, the meaning of our lives, or the absence of meaning. These are basic and extremely simple aspects of existence, but our limitations prevent us from responding in an unequivocal way and for that reason we generate an emotional response, as a defense mechanism. It's pure biology. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Intel continues ... to abuse their monopoly, and that's why, around the world, governments and regulatory agencies continue to go after them. — Hector Ruiz

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There is no truth to find. — Miguel Ruiz

Friends?"
"Till death us do part. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves.
But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

You are not here to sacrifice your joy or your life. You are here to live, to be happy, and to love. If you can do your best in two hours of meditation, but you spend eight hours instead, you will only grow tired, miss the point, and you won't enjoy your life. Do your best, and perhaps you will learn that no matter how long you meditate, you can live, love, and be happy. — Miguel Ruiz

Humans have a need to explain and justify everything; we have a need for knowledge, and we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know. — Miguel Ruiz

But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way I can take this personally. — Miguel Ruiz

I turned to discover the faint smile of the bookseller's
niece. Her voice was pure crystal, transparent and so fragile I feared that her words would break if I interrupted them. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I am only responsible for what I say; I am not responsible for what you hear. — Miguel Ruiz Jr.

For many years, I used to pray as an act of power, but that was before I had 100% faith in myself. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

And as he watched them walk out of the orphanage, Thomas Carter would think of their lives as the blank pages of a book in which he had written the initial chapters of a story he would never be allowed to finish. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

That afternoon the sky was scattered with black clouds galloping in from the sea and clustering over the city. Flashes of lightening echoed on the horizon and a charged warm wind smelling of dust announced a powerful summer storm. When I reached the station I noticed the first few drops, shiny and heavy, like coins falling from heaven ... Night seemed to fall suddenly, interrupted only by the lightning now bursting over the city, leaving a trail of noise and fury. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

All I wish is for you to be happy, that everything you aspire to achieve may come true and that, although you may forget me in the course of time, one day you may finally understand how much I loved you. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Don't believe me, don't believe yourself, and don't believe anyone else. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Vidal had his exuberant and stately tower in the most elegant and elevated part of Pedralbes, surrounded by hills, trees, and fairy-tale skies. I would have my sinister tower rising above the oldest, darkest streets of the city, surrounded by the miasmas and the shadows of that necropolis which poets and murderers had once called the Rose of Fire. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We feel like acting like a Christian, following the steps of Christ, is much more important than following a doctrine. — Isabel Ruiz Lucero

If you always do your best, there is no way you can judge yourself. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Men are like chestnuts they sell in the street: they're all hot and they all smell good when you buy them, but when you take them out of the paper cone you realise that most of them are rotten inside. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Don't make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. - MIGUEL ANGEL RUIZ It's better to take the time to ask questions and to find the words to say what you really feel. Often we leave so much room for interpretation either because we are rushing or because we are afraid to speak the whole truth, but this is where miscommunications start. So even if you aren't sure about what someone means or how they feel, just ask them. Goal: When was the last time you assumed something and were wrong? Make a point to know the truth and not assume it. — Demi Lovato

I respect you when I don't try to tell you how to live your life, how to dress, how to walk, how to talk, how to do whatever you do in your kingdom. — Miguel Ruiz

Ninety-five percent of the beliefs we have stored in our minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these lies. — Miguel Ruiz

Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The big difference between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses, and the warrior refrains. Victims repress because they are afraid to show the emotions, afraid to say what they want to say. To refrain is not the same thing as repression. To refrain is to hold the emotions and to express them in the right moment, not before, not later. That is why warriors are impeccable. They have complete control over their own emotions and therefore over their own behavior. — Miguel Ruiz

we only remember what never really happened. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I knew that Clara kept Carax's book in a glass cabinet by the arch of the balcony. I crept up to it. My plan, or my lack of it, was to lay my hands on the book, take it out of there, give it to that lunatic, and lose sight of him forever after. Nobody would notice the book's absence, except me. Carax's book was waiting for me, as it always did, its spine just visible at the end of a shelf. I took it in my hands and pressed it against my chest, as if embracing an old friend whom I was about to betray. Judas, I thought. I decided to leave the place without making Clara aware of my presence. I would take the book and disappear from Clara's life forever. Quietly, I stepped out of the library. The door of her bedroom was just visible at the end of the corridor ... I walked slowly up to the door. I put my fingers on the doorknob. My fingers trembled. I had arrived too late. I swallowed hard and opened the door. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Time does to the body what stupidity does to the soul — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

My father said, 'Son, when you grow up, I don't want you to be a member of a party that caters to the oppressed and the poor. You have to aspire to be a member of a party that is happy, winning and influential.' — Hector Ruiz

Knowledge is unsettled by the idea of power. We see how it works in the worlds of business and politics, and we suspect that it works the same in the spiritual world. We presume it's a gift for the exceptional and the few. She can do it, but we cannot, people might say to themselves. He is the chosen one; I am not. He's a master, but I can never be. We have become masters of what we are not. We have made ourselves vulnerable to the belief that others have greater power than we do, because we won't acknowledge the power of us - the truth of us. Power, to the world-dream, is something small and self-serving. Power, from the point of view of creation, is infinite and selfless. — Miguel Ruiz

We were born in this society, we grew up in this society. And we learn to be like everyone else, playing nonsense all the time. — Miguel Ruiz

Today is the beginning of a new dream. — Miguel Ruiz

All the geography, trigonometry, and arithmetic in the world are useless unless you learn to think for yourself. No school teaches you that. It's not on the curriculum. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He believed that life gives us all a few moments of happiness. For some they last hours or days, for a few lucky ones they last for years. The memories from those moments stays with us forever and turns into a country of memory to which we try to go back for the rest of our lives without ever being able to — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Men, as is more than evident, respond, contrariwise, to the dictates of their genital and digestive organs. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The resurrection is to be like a child, but with a difference. The difference is that we have freedom with wisdom instead of innocence. — Miguel Ruiz

As readers, we want not only a strong story, but also characters we can relate to, characters that feel real. We have to find something of ourselves in them. Each character, even those only there to serve the mechanics of the plot, should have a number of layers. The entire world you are stepping into as a reader must feel real. It must have resonance, you must be able to touch the light; smell the smells. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Opening the door quietly, I slipped in without switching on the light. From the entrance hall, I
could see the dining room at the end of the corridor, the table still decked out for the party. The cake was there, untouched, and the crockery still waited for the meal. I could make out the motionless silhouette of my father in his armchair, as he observed the scene from the window. He was awake and still wearing his best suit. Wreaths of smoke rose lazily from a cigarette he held between his index and ring
fingers, as if it were a pen. I hadn't seen my father smoke for years. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

It seems that in the advanced stages of stupidity, a lack of ideas is compensated for by an excess of ideologies. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call God. Everything is God. — Miguel Ruiz

It doesn't matter whether you believe in Christ, Moses, Allah, Brahma, Buddha, or any other being or master. Each one of us has our own beliefs, our own point of view. There are billions of different points of view, but it's the same force of life behind each one of us. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Justice is an affectation of perspective, not a universal value. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Forgiveness is the only way to heal. We can choose to forgive because we feel compassion for ourselves. — Miguel Ruiz

The real you is still a little child who never grew up. Sometimes that little child comes out when you are having fun or playing, when you feel happy, when you are painting, or writing poetry, or playing the piano, or expressing yourself in some way. These are the happiest moments of your life - when the real you comes out, when you don't care about the past and you don't worry about the future. You are childlike. — Miguel Ruiz

All the bad things you do in life come back to you, (David). And I've done a lot of bad things. A lot. But I've paid the price. (The Angel's Game) — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When we get into a relationship of any kind, it is because we want to share, we want to enjoy, we want to have fun, we don't want to be bored. If we look for a partner, it is because we want to play, we want to be happy and enjoy what we are. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.' - Senor Sempere. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon