The Spy

by Paulo Coelho

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.

Yes, I was a prostitute—if by that you mean someone who receives favors and jewelry in exchange for affection and pleasure. Yes, I was a liar, one so compulsive and out of control that I often forgot what I’d said and had to expend great mental energy to cover my blunders.

Early on, as a teenager, I learned that I was beautiful from the way my friends used to imitate me.

“They’re tulip seeds, the symbol of our country. But, more than that, they represent a truth you must learn. These seeds will always be tulips, even if at the moment you cannot tell them apart from other flowers. They will never turn into roses or sunflowers, no matter how much they might desire to. And if they try to deny their own existence, they will live life bitter and die.

no European woman could compete with an Asian woman, for whom sex was like a dance.

He failed to understand that dance is a poem, one where each movement represents a word.

And I will talk about my dances—thankfully, I have pictures showing most of the movements and costumes. Contrary to what the critics who never understood me said, when I was onstage I simply forgot about the woman I was and offered everything to God. That is why I was able to undress so easily. At that moment, I was nothing, not even my body. I was just movements communing with the universe.

I was always asking for favors in exchange for sex. I was used to it by then, but it is one thing to get used to something, another to be satisfied. Money was not enough. I wanted more!

The clothing was formed of veils layered one on top of the other. I removed the first one and no one seemed to pay much notice. But when I removed the second, then the third, people began to exchange glances. By the fifth veil, the audience was totally focused on what I was doing, caring little about the dance but wondering how far I would go. Even the women, whose eyes I met now and then between movements, did not seem shocked or angry; it must have excited them as much as it did the men.

I was still an illustrious unknown, but I had made the most important step; each member of the audience had left enthralled, and this would be the best publicity I could ask for.

Never fall in love. Love is a poison. Once you fall in love, you lose control over your life—your heart and mind belong to someone else. Your existence is threatened. You start to do everything to hold on to your loved one and lose all sense of danger. Love, that inexplicable and dangerous thing, sweeps everything you are from the face of the earth and, in its place, leaves only what your beloved wants you to be.”

herself. Love kills suddenly, leaving no evidence of the crime.

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.

Everyone suffers; those who leave, those who stay, and their families and children. But no one can do anything.”

But women are able to understand one another without exchanging a word.

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

While he seemed to not quite understand, he politely began to talk about the importance of the eyes in dance. He was fascinated by eyes, and when he happened to go to the theater, he paid little attention to the movements of the bodies and instead concentrated on what the eyes were trying to say.

You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says: “You could try something else.”

He wasn’t there just for the sex, but to feel wanted, as a woman’s passion could truly arouse the feeling that he was capable of anything. Yes, love and power were the same thing—and not just for me.

The fact that he recognized me struck a chord that can resonate very loudly in any human being: vanity.

The most beautiful melody in the world will become a monstrosity if the strings are out of tune.

“It may not seem it, but here you’re in paradise. It may be boring, but what paradise isn’t? I know you are likely in search of adventure, and I hope you’ll forgive my impertinence, but people are usually ungrateful for what they have.” I thanked him for the advice and went on my way. What kind of paradise was this, where nothing, absolutely nothing, interesting happened? I was not looking for happiness, but what the French called la vraie vie, a true life, with its moments of inexpressible beauty and deep depression, with its loyalties and betrayals, with its fears and moments of peace.

I realized that I had always been a warrior, facing my battles without any bitterness; they were part of life.

Liars, what little I know of them, are people who seek popularity and recognition.

In peacetime, no one would accept such delusions as evidence. In wartime, it was all the judge needed to have you arrested the next day.

Helene’s fate will probably be the same as yours, though I have my doubts, because she is a French national with influential friends in the newspapers, and did not use the weapon most condemned by all moralists, the one which makes you a favorite to inhabit Dante’s Inferno: seduction.