The Spy

by Paulo Coelho

The memories always win, and with them comes a demon that is even more terrifying than melancholy: remorse.

“My first piece of advice is the hardest, and it has nothing to do with your performance. 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.”

She pretended she was just “tolerating” my words, but I knew I had opened an old wound that would begin to bleed again.

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

“Know what you want and try to go beyond your own expectations. Improve your dancing, practice a lot, and set a very high goal, one that will be difficult to achieve. 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.”

looked only toward the sunshine and forgot the storms. I let myself be dazzled by the beauty of the roses but paid no attention to the thorns.

And the price of a dream is always high.

had never done that before. I thought that speaking about my wounds would only make them more real. And yet the exact opposite was taking place: My tears were healing me.

It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and the rainwater to wash. That is what I was doing now, in front of a man with whom I had no intimacy. That was the real reason I was able to speak so freely.

The word he was trying to say, but didn’t have the courage to voice, was “spy.”

French called la vraie vie, a true life,

First she sang of a man and a woman who fall in love. Then how love justifies any sacrifice. And so, as the moon crossed the sky, the nightingale sang and the most beautiful rose of the rosebush was being crimsoned by her blood. “Faster,” said the rosebush at one point. “The sun will rise soon.”

Each time I recall this myth, I wonder: Are we never to be able to see the true face of love?

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 req...

Love does not obey anyone and will betray those who try to decipher its mystery.

Because when we truly love, we know others and ourselves better. We do not need words, documents, minutes, statements, accusations, or defenses. We need only what Ecclesiastes says:

“Instead of justice there was wickedness, instead of righteousness, there was yet more wickedness….But God will judge them all, both the righteous and the wicked, God will judge them both, for there is a time for every intention, a time for every deed.”