Eleven Minutes

by Paulo Coelho

Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.

It’s all a question of culture, you see. Of finding a palatable way of presenting something that is otherwise very hard to take.

Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. ‘Why have you come?’ she asked Death. ‘So that you can fly once more with him across the sky,’ Death replied. ‘If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again.’