"Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now."

"Because you believed I was capable of behaving decently, I did."

"How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?"

"Man needs to choose, not just accept his destiny."

"I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other."

"Ester asked why people are sad."That's simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams."

"Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,..."

"Don't be intimidated by other people's opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do."

"Everyday, God gives us the sun- and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Everyday, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist - that today is the sames as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment."

"Finding one important thing in your life doesn't mean you have togive up all the other important things."

"But as far as true goodness was concerned, that didn't exist - not in the land of cowardly men."

"That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say."

"It's true, life really is generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend."

"They spent days, nights, weeks and months talking, never accepting the fact that, good or bad, an idea only exists when someone tries to put it into practice."

"I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space...sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate."

"Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I felt as if nature was in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul."

"A divided kingdom cannot defend itself from its adversaries. A divided person cannot face life in a dignified way."

"The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility."

"God never abandons His children."

"And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

"Fortunate are those who take the first step. Someday people will realize that men and women are capable of speaking the language of the angels - that all of us are possessed of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and that we can perform miracles, cure, prophesy, and understand."

"I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads."

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

"And one has to understand that braveness is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear."

"In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die?"

"The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love."

"Where are they written?" "In the world around us. Merely be attentive to what happens in your life, and you will discover where, every moment of the day, He hides His words and His will. Seek to do as He asks: this alone is the reason you are in the world." "If I discover it, I'll write it on clay tablets.""Do so. But write them, above all, in your heart; there they can neither burned nor destroyed, and you will take them wherever you go."

"Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you."

"We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation."

"Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold?The tree says to the leaf:"That's the cycle of life. You may think you're going to die, but you live on in me. It's thanks to you that I'm alive, because I can breathe. It's also thanks to you that I have felt loved, because I was able to give shade to the weary traveller. Your sap is in my sap; we are one thing."

"And when I think about it, I guess it is true that people always arrive at the right moment at the place where someone awaits them."

"Don't you think you're quite young?''I'm twenty-one,' said Brida. 'If I wanted to start learning ballet, I'd be conseidered too old."

"Knowing someone's name meant knowing that the other person was a human being and not "the enemy. Knowing someone's name transformed him into a unique and special individual, with a past and a future, with ancestors and possibly descendants, a person who has known triumphs and failures. People are their names; they're proud of them; they repeat them thousands of times in their lifetime and identify with them. It's the first word they learn after "Daddy and "Mummy."

"In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today."

"But human beings are like that, she thought. We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear."

"We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to."

"Because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith."

"We're living in an age in which everything is allowed, and democracy is being devoured and destroyed by that limitless freedom."

"She, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child."

"The only thing she could do now was to shed a few tears, feeling rather afraid of herself, an intelligent young woman, who had everything going for her, but who tended to make the wrong decisions. She just hoped that this time she was right."

"Isn't wine prohibited here?" the boy asked. "It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil," said the alchemist. "It's what comes out of their mouths that is."

"It's now what enters men's mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of their mouths that is."

"It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think yours is the only path."

"Millions of couples out there practiced the art of sadomasochism every day, without even realizing it. They went to work, came back, complained about everything, insulted their wife or were insulted by her, felt wretched, but were, nonetheless, tightly bound to their own unhappiness, not realizing that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression."

"Go and get your things,' he said. 'Dreams mean work."

"The completion is always more difficult that the beginning."

"Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you ll find your treasure."

"Break the glass, I thought to myself, because it is a symbolic gesture. Try to understand that within myself, things were breaking of much more importance than a glass, and I'm happy for that. Look to your own inner struggles and break this glass.Our parents taught us to be careful with glasses and with our bodies. They taught us that the passions of childhood are impossible; we should not remove men from the priesthood, that people do not perform miracles and that no one goes on a journey without knowing where he wants to go.Break this cup, please, I thought to myself, and release of all these damn misconceptions, the habit you have of only doing that which everyone agrees with."

"Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it-just as we have learned to live with storms."

"Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone."