Quotes By Paulo Coelho

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I hate to be smart.

The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

I'm modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

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.

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.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

It's very difficult to read a book on your computer.

I never say I am a guru.

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.

People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they're much more open.

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.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

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.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes.

I don't go to parties in general.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset - tears are words waiting to be written.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.

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.

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.

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

You should treat a muse like a fairy.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

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.

Everything for me is sacred, beginning with earth, but also going to things made by man.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.