"When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true."
— Paulo Coelho

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."
— Paulo Coelho

"So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you."
— Paulo Coelho

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."
— Paulo Coelho

"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist - Gift Edition)

"Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?"
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly."
— Paulo Coelho

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"This is what we call love. When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening, because everything happens within you."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.

No one wants their life thrown into chaos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded.

Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.

Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it - which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?

I don't know."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path."
— Paulo Coelho

"What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate."
— Paulo Coelho

"Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused."
— Paulo Coelho

"It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn."
— Paulo Coelho

"The simple things are also the most extraordinary things,and only the wise can see them."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or--such is the pleasure they experience--they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"If I am really a part of your dream, you'll come back one day."
— Paulo Coelho

"Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist - Gift Edition)

"In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire."
— Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

"When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive."
— Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)

"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist - Gift Edition)

"We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."
— Paulo Coelho

"Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires."
— Paulo Coelho

"When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us."
— Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

"Love simply is."
— Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

"In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. It hurt when I lost each of the various men I fell in love with. Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it."
— Paulo Coelho

"What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows."
— Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

"There are moments when troubles enter our lives and we can do nothing to avoid them.
But they are there for a reason. Only when we have overcome them will we understand why they were there."
— Paulo Coelho (The Fifth Mountain)

"I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them."
— Paulo Coelho

"Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take is the worst of suffering."
— Paulo Coelho

"...behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire."
— Paulo Coelho (Warrior of the Light: A Manual)

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun--and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist--that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists--a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles."
— Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

"Your eyes show the strength of your soul."
— Paulo Coelho

"You are what you believe yourself to be."
— Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

"if pain must come, may it come quickly. because i have a life to live, and i need to live it in the best possible. if he has to make a choice, may he make it now. then i will either wait for him or forget him. waiting is painful. forgetting is painful. but not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."
— Paulo Coelho

"If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to."
— Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die: A Novel of Redemption)

"We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"We pretend to be strong because we are weak."
— Paulo Coelho