Paulo Coelho
When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.
You should treat a muse like a fairy.
I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset - tears are words waiting to be written.
Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, opinions.
Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.
No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes.
What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I'm someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.
What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.
The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they deny somehow that God has a feminine face. However, if you go to the holy texts, you see there is this feminine presence.
If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.
I am a Catholic because I choose to be a Catholic. And then I go to the Mass because I choose. It is out of my free will.
I'm not a person that socializes very well.
Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.
Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.
Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?
Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.
I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.
My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that's it. I don't tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.
About the idea of a clash between cultures, between civilisations, I don't believe in it. It's something some political leaders tried to use, and that the media tried and are still trying to sell us, in order to simplify the world and their work.
There is an afterlife. I am convinced of this.
People are very reluctant to talk about their private lives but then you go to the internet and they're much more open.
I love almost everything about my work except conferences. I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul.
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.
Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.
Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.
I am 100 per cent Virgo, stubborn, over-organised, slightly abstracted from the rest of the world.
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.
I have been practicing archery for a long time; a bow and arrow helps me to unwind.
Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I'm going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.
I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.
I am a Catholic, not so committed to the church, but to the idea of the Virgin, the female face of God.
I was arrested three times and tortured once.
It's very difficult to read a book on your computer.
I never say I am a guru.
I am a Catholic.
When I'm dancing, I'm not thinking about anything. I am here. I am totally there. You know? And the feeling is a sensation of being away from myself. My soul dances with the angels, and my body dances with my wife.
Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.
I don't try to control my days.
The only thing that relaxes me is archery. That's why I have to have apartments with gardens.
Everything for me is sacred, beginning with earth, but also going to things made by man.
Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.
Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.
I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution - they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.
I can't consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.
I'm first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can't say why I'm one.
MySpace is an addiction.
The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.
It's not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.
I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.