I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: 'Oh my God, what a blessing.' Then you realise it's important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.
— Paulo Coelho
Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.
It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.
People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they're much more open.
I don't go to parties in general.
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.
There is an afterlife. I am convinced of this.
Twitter is my bar. I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations, starting others, feeling the atmosphere.
When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It's very simple.
I never say I am a guru.
In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.
Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.
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 write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don't hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.
Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.
Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.
The only thing that relaxes me is archery. That's why I have to have apartments with gardens.
I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.
My readers - and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.
Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.
The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.
I don't try to control my days.
I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.
Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?
We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.
I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.
MySpace is an addiction.
It's very difficult to read a book on your computer.
All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.
Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.
I was arrested three times and tortured once.
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.
We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.
I'm not a person that socializes very well.
I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset - tears are words waiting to be written.
I hate to be smart.
Today, writers want to impress other writers.
Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.
I'm modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.
I am a Catholic.
Publishers see free downloads as threatening the sales of the book.
Music for me, it demands full concentration.
Everything for me is sacred, beginning with earth, but also going to things made by man.
You should treat a muse like a fairy.
We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
