Paulo Coelho

"Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it's how you deal with your life, with your surroundings."

"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."

"However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have."

"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."

"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."

"Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience."

"Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way."

"I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"Music for me, it demands full concentration."

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

"Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age."

"Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure."

"The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality - it connects you to reality."

"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."

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

"With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated."

"You're always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort."