Quotes from Paulo Coelho

Not one word to stop me from doing something I shouldn't? 'No. By doing what you shouldn't, you will realize it yourself. As I said in the restaurant, the light in your soul is greater than the darkness. But for this you must go all the way to the end of the game.

I read the Bible and know little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the ten commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.

I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald.

Why don't people's hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams? the boy asked the alchemist. Because that's what makes the heart suffer most, and hearts don't like to suffer.

In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends.

Life is the moment we're living right now.

Don't think about what you've left behind.

Knowing that doesn't make any difference. People do their best not to remember and not to accept the immense magical potential they possess, because that would upset their neat little universes.

When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded.

I have nothing and I am everything.

I savour the idea of my new state: single and a millionaire.