Eleven Minutes

by Paulo Coelho

That’s what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but if you dare to ask a question, they don’t know anything.

Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.

That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.

really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

Contrary to what my clients think, sex cannot be practised at any time. We all have a clock inside us, and in order to make love, the hands on both clocks have to be pointing to the same hour at the same time. That doesn’t happen every day. If you love another person, you don’t depend on the sex act in order to feel good. Two people who live together and love each other need to adjust the hands of their clocks, with patience and perseverance, games and ‘theatrical representations’, until they realise that making love is more than just an encounter, it is a genital ‘embrace’.

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.

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

‘You can’t say to the spring: "Come now and last as long as possible." You can only say: "Come and bless me with your hope, and stay as long as you can."’