The Alchemist

by Paulo Coelho

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

First and foremost, I am a writer—and a writer is always facing the challenge of a new book. This is, for me, what makes life interesting: there is always a new book to be written, which involves pain, joy, suffering, relief, feelings of a person who is alive. Do I have the fear of failure? Yes. But I can’t be paralyzed by this. To do that, I need to live my life fully, which I do, accepting all challenge and all possibilities. Having said that, I don’t think why this or that happened, and I became a worldwide celebrity. I think: “Am I honest in what I am doing? Can I still talk to my soul?” The secret of the success of my books, if there is one, it is the absence of secrets. When I wrote THE ALCHEMIST, it did not sell at all in its first year, it was totally ignored by the press because the media normally refuses to publish anything about an unknown writer. But it made its way to the readers, and the readers started to discover that we share the same questions. Little by little, the book started to travel abroad, and today is one of the best-selling books of all time. But this success came slowly, based on word-of-mouth promotion, and this gives me the sensation, the wonderful sensation, that I am not alone. My new book, THE ARCHER, will be out November 10. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52585195-the-archer