"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)

"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

"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)

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

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

"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)

"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

"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)

"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 They are the engineers of the superseded.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)

"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)

"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

"Because it's not love to be static like the desert, nor is it love to roam the world like the wind. And it's not love to see everything from a distance, like you do. Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. When I first reached through to it, I thought the Soul of the World was perfect. But later, I could see that it was like other aspects of creation, and had its own passions and wars. It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"We can also allow our Soulmate to pass us by,without accepting him or her,or even noticing. Then we will need another incarnation in order to find that Soulmate. And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness."
— Paulo Coelho

"A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place."
— Paulo Coelho

"I’ve met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I’m not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months’ time, I’ll be far away and he’ll be just a memory, but I couldn’t stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit…
Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meeting are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes directions."
— Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes: A Novel)

"You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow."
— Paulo Coelho

"It's not my story anymore: whenever I speak about the past now, I feel as if I were talking about something that has nothing to do with me. All that remains in the present are the voice, the presence, and the importance of fulfilling my mission. I don't regret difficulties I experienced; I think they helped me to become the person I am today, I feel the way a warrior must feel after years of training; he doesn't remember the details of everything he learned, but he knows how to strike when the time is right."
— Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)

"After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony."
— Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

"By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river –– leaves, insects, the feathers of birds ––is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. The winter air chills the tears on my cheeks, and my tears fall into the cold waters that course past me. Somewhere, this river joins another, then another, until –– far from my heart and sight –– all of them merge with the sea.

May my tears run just as far, that my love might never know that one day I cried for him. May my tears run just as far, that I might forget the River Piedra, the monastery, the church in the Pyrenees, the mists, and the paths we walked together.

I shall forget the roads, the mountains, and the fields of my dreams –– the dreams that will never come true.

I remember my “magic moment” –– that instant when a “yes” or a “no” can change one’s life forever. It seems so long ago now. It is hard to believe that it was only last week that I had found my love once again, and then lost him.

I am writing this story on the bank of the River Piedra. My hands are freezing, my legs are numb, and every minute I want to stop.

“Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old,” he said.

Perhaps love makes us old before our time –– or young, if youth has passed. But how can I not recall those moments? That is why I write –– to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance. So that when I finish telling myself the story, I cam toss it into the Piedra. That’s what the woman who has given me shelter told me to do. Only then –– in the words of one of the saints –– will the water extinguish what flames have written.

All love stories are the same."
— Paulo Coelho

"Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that i would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we'd know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn't have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words."
— Paulo Coelho (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept)

"Needless to say, I had been alone on other occasions during the year. Needless to say, my girlfriend was only two hours away by plane. Needless to say, after a busy day, what could be better than a stroll through the narrow streets and lanes of the old city, without having to talk to anyone, simply enjoying the beauty around me. And yet the feeling that surfaced was one of oppressive, distressing loneliness – not having someone with whom I could share the city, the walk, the things I’d like to say.

..there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence."
— Paulo Coelho

"Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum."
— Paulo Coelho

"Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives."
— Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)

"You say they create their own reality," said Veronika, "but what is reality?"
— Paulo Coelho (Veronika Decides to Die: A Novel of Redemption)

"No one should ever ask themselves that: why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy."
— Paulo Coelho (The Zahir)

"He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have."
— Paulo Coelho

"There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat."
— Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation)

"Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life."
— Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes."
— Paulo Coelho (The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom)

"So you see, Good and Evil have the same face; it all depends on when they cross the path of each individual human being."
— Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym: A Novel of Temptation)

"You have understood what all great painters understand: in order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them."
— Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
— e.e. cummings

"Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
— Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."
— Jim Morrison

"I need this wild life, this freedom."
— Zane Grey

"Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions': a rebel. If enough people come to agree with, and follow, the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have --- Greatness."
— Aleister Crowley

"The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without."
— Aleister Crowley

"The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal."
— Aleister Crowley

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
— Aleister Crowley (The Book of the Law/Liber Al Vel Legis)

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales."
— Aleister Crowley

"Everyone interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstand you, or doesn't understand you at all."
— Aleister Crowley

"Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence."
— Aleister Crowley

"In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless."
— Aleister Crowley

"Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life. "
— Aleister Crowley

"The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript."
— Aleister Crowley

"Ever notice how 'What the hell' is always the right answer?"
— Marilyn Monroe

"Who said nights were for sleep?"
— Marilyn Monroe

"If you're gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty."
— Marilyn Monroe

"It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on."
— Marilyn Monroe