The Spy

by Paulo Coelho

I look back at my life and realize that memory is a river, one that always runs backward.

Memories are full of caprice, where images of things we’ve experienced are still capable of suffocating us through one small detail or insignificant sound.

“Flowers teach us that nothing is permanent: not their beauty, not even the fact that they will inevitably wilt, because they will still give new seeds. Remember this when you feel joy, pain, or sadness. Everything passes, grows old, dies, and is reborn.”

“Change” and “change for the better” are two very different things.

Simple is wanting to be famous, but staying that way for more than a month or a year, especially when that fame is linked to one’s body, is what is hard. Simple is wanting a man with all your heart, but that becomes impossible and complicated when that man is married with children and wouldn’t leave his family for anything in this world.”

When we don’t know where life is taking us, we are never lost.

Because that is an artist’s mission: to go beyond one’s limits. An artist who desires very little and achieves it has failed in life.”

It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and the rainwater to wash.

love and power were the same thing—and not just for me.

I was someone who could change the fate of the world, make France win the war while I pretended I was spying for the Germans.

In a war, the first casualty is human dignity.

one page will suffice to summarize: They attempted to trace the origin of your money, and then that part was sealed as “secret,” because they came to the conclusion that many men in high positions would be implicated.

Are we never to be able to see the true face of love? And I understand what the Greeks meant by this: Love is an act of faith and its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling and emotion because if we try to decipher it and understand it, the magic disappears. We follow its winding and luminous paths, we let ourselves go to the highest peak or the deepest seas, but we trust in the hand that leads us. If we do not allow ourselves to be frightened, we will always awaken in a palace; if we fear the steps that will be required by love and want it to reveal everything to us, the result is that we will be left with nothing.