Paulo Coelho

After weeks on the road, listening to a language you don’t understand, using a currency whose value you don’t comprehend, walking down streets you’ve never walked down before, you discover that your old “I,” along with everything you ever learned, is absolutely no use at all in the face of those new challenges, and you begin to realize that buried deep in your unconscious mind there is someone much more interesting and adventurous and more open to the world and to new experiences.

I am a Catholic, not so committed to the church, but to the idea of the Virgin, the female face of God.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution - they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

Being equally convinced that aggression and rudeness are synonymous with having a "powerful personality."

I'm first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can't say why I'm one.

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

The visible is always a mirror of the invisible. The reality is imagined before it manifests itself.

"Difficulty" is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are.

As he looked up at the clouds or down at the precipice, he realized that this woman was the most important thing in his life; that she was the explanation, the sole reason for the existence of those rocks, that sky, that winter. If she were not there with him, it wouldn't matter if all the angels of heaven came flying down to comfort him--Paradise would make no sense.

Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success

May love fill your heart, compassion guide your mind, faith rule your soul.

I learned that the search for God is a Dark Night, that Faith is a Dark Night. And that’s hardly a surprise really, because for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.

I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness. What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad. It was a very strong temptation.

It is always far easier to have faith in your own goodness than to confront others ad fight for your rights.

I'm like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.

The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.

The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes. That's the way it will be with our love for each other

I am my own best friend and my own worst enemy. Before coming here, I was thinking I don't deserve it, that i wouldn't be able to meet your expectations, and that you had probably chosen the wrong candidate. At the same time, my heart was telling me that i was being rewarded because i hadn't given up and had fought to the end

So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.

If I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be this: don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do. Seek out people who aren’t afraid of making mistakes and who, therefore, do make mistakes. Because of that, their work often isn’t recognized, but they are precisely the kind of people who change the world and, after many mistakes, do something that will transform their own community completely.

It's better to live cherishing a dream than face the possibilty that it might all come to nothing.