By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

by Paulo Coelho

YOU HAVE TO take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.

“What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage: the certainty that you wasted your life.”

And I began to feel sorry for myself; for so many years, my drawer full of memories had held the same old stories.

In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire. Anything else is fantasy.

“The wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love,”

Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.

Anyone who can conquer her heart can conquer the world.

I wish I didn’t have to control my heart. If I could surrender, even if only for a weekend, this rain falling on my face would feel different. If love were easy, I would be embracing him now, and the words of his song would be our story. If Zaragoza weren’t waiting for me after the holidays, I’d want to stay drunk and be free to kiss him, caress him, say the things and hear the things that lovers say and do to each other.

I don’t know what his fears are, but I know my own. I don’t need new fears—my own are enough.

I was sure I could never fall in love with someone like him. I knew him too well, all his weaknesses and fears. I just couldn’t admire him as the others seemed to.

But love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one...

For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved...

LOVE IS A TRAP. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

“Some people always have to be doing battle with someone, sometimes even with themselves, battling with their own lives. So they begin to create a kind of play in their head, and they write the script based on their frustrations.”

But other people also ‘invite’ us to behave like victims, when they complain about the unfairness of life, for example, and ask us to agree, to offer advice, to participate.”

I knew he was going to turn my world upside down. My brain warned me, but my heart didn’t want to take its advice.

All this was so new to me. Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown—even when we don’t want to and when we think we don’t need to.

I was tired of playing the child and acting the way many of my friends did—the ones who are afraid that love is impossible without even knowing what love is. If I stayed like that, I would miss out on everything good that these few days with him might offer.

But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you’re fighting for.”

The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.”

Love doesn’t need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself. That night, by the well, the silence had allowed our hearts to approach each other and get to know each other better. My heart had listened closely to what his had said, and now it was content.

We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.

I also knew that from this moment on I was going to experience heaven and hell, joy and pain, dreams and hopelessness; that I would no longer be capable of containing the winds that blew from the hidden corners of my soul. I knew that from this moment on love would be my guide—and that it had waited to lead me ever since childhood, when I had felt love for the first time. The truth is, I had never forgotten love, even when it had deemed me unworthy of fighting for it. But love had been difficult, and I had been reluctant to cross its frontiers.

You’re making me happy. And happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.”

I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I didn’t know how to begin.

Love never comes just a little at a time, I

truth resides where there is faith.”

Whenever someone follows the path to faith—sincerely follows it—he or she is able to unite with God and to perform miracles.

One has only to believe, accept, and be willing to make mistakes.”

“Accept the gift. And then the gift manifests itself.”

I am always better than I think and stronger than I believe.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.

I will not talk to my own darkness anymore, I promised myself, closing the door on the Other. A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth.

I think that when we look for love courageously, it reveals itself, and we wind up attracting even more love. If one person really wants us, everyone does. But if we’re alone, we become even more alone. Life is strange.”

‘I do not promise you happiness in this world.’

Give me the opportunity to learn through my love, because love has never kept anyone away from their dreams.

no single day is the same as any other and that each morning brings its own special miracle, its magic moment in which ancient universes are destroyed and new stars are created.

Respect your time on this Earth, understand that God has always pardoned you, and learn to pardon too.”

“‘The energy of hate will take you nowhere, but the energy of pardon which manifests itself through love will manage to change your life in a positive sense.’”