Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho
Paulo Coelho de Souzais a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. His novel The Alchemist has been translated into 80 languages. The author has sold over 200 million copies worldwide and is the all-time bestselling Portuguese language author...
NationalityBrazilian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1947
CityRio de Janeiro, Brazil
CountryBrazil
We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.
Enjoy the questions because they open many doors. Forget the answers because they always change.
It's important though to distinguish between religion and spirituality.
I realised that you don't have to jump through a series of complicated hoops to achieve a goal.
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.
... I simply accept that technology is stronger and more powerful than me: it works when it wants to, and when it doesn't its best to go for a walk, and just wait until the cables and telephone links are in a better mood and the computer decides to work again. I am not, I have discovered, my computers master: it has a life of its own.
That 'simple desire' to share something meant that we could enter the world of language without words, where everything is always clear and there is no danger of being misinterpreted.
Everything is worship if your mind is focused on the present moment.
When you cease doubting, you have stopped moving forward.
When we boldly seek love, love reveals itself to us, and we end up attracting more love. If one person loves us, everybody loves us.
The parents always insisted on telling their child that their secret friends didn't exist - perhaps because they had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angel at one time. Or, who knows, perhaps they thought they lived in a world where there was no longer any place for angels.
The energy that many people call love, is, in fact, the raw material from which the universe was built.
The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return.
The day will come when those knocking at the door will see it open; those who ask will receive; those who weep will be consoled.