Quotes from Paulo Coelho

Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is intense, then sex joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the principal aim.

When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It's very simple.

Don't listen to the malicious comments of those friends who, never taking any risks themselves, can only see other people's failures.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Sometimes, we are so attached to our way of life that we turn down wonderful opportunities simply because don't know what to do with it.

I've done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price - which has been the case most of the time.

She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger

Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily

When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.

If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.

I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I'm not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.

I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.

We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

Beauty is the greatest seducer of man.

I think you can have 10 000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death? Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem

If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.