"Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested."

"Love never comes just a little bit at a time, I thought, as I watched him, absorbed in contemplation of the Virgin. The previous day, the world made sense, even without love's presence. But now we needed each other in order to see the true brilliance of things."

"Going after what I believe in."

"But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for."

"Beauty is the greatest seducer of man."

"Writing is easy: just stare at the screen of your computer until a tear drops on your keyboard."

"Fear exists before and after, but not while the shots are being fired, because, at that moment, you see men at their very limit, capable of the most heroic of actions and the most inhumane."

"And to those who believe that adventures are i say try routine: it kills you far more quickly."

"Why is patience so important?""Because it makes us pay attention."

"When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing."

"Once someone asked me, "What do you want to be your epitaph?" So I said, "Paulo Coelho died when he was alive."

"I'm afraid of committing myself, she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none."

"If evil exists its to be found in our fears."

"Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused."

"What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream. That's the point at which most people give up. It's the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one 'dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.' "Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested."

"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."

"Even God has a hell: his love of Mankind."

"A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right."

"My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing beauty of life once more. It's happened before, it will happen again, I'm sure. When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive--I'll find love again."

"Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint."

"Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings."

"Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is intense, then sex joins in to complete the dance, but it is never the principal aim."

"Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear.Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory.But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear."

"Do not try to explain feelings. Live everything intensely and treasure what you feel as a gift from God."

"A Warrior of the Light does not waste his time listening to provocations, he has a destiny to fulfill."

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

"It isn'y explanations that carry us forward, it's our desire to go on."

"The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return.... Those who don't return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything. They become the Soul of the World."

"We who determine how quickly time passes."

"Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to do so."

"Dont try to be useful. Try to be yourself; that is enough, and that makes all the difference."

"The Warrior of the Light knows that it is impossible to live in a state of complete relaxation.He has learned from the archer that, in order to shoot his arrow any distance, he must hold the bow taut. He has learned from the stars that only an inner explosion allows them to shine. The Warrior notices that when a horse is about to jump over a fence, it tenses all its muscles.But he never confuses tension with anxiety."

"When you're in love, you're capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the the mysteries."

"Never miss an opportunity to show your love, especially to those close to you, because we are always at our most cautious with them for fear of being hurt."

"You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude?"

"I had never heard her sound so calm, so resigned to her fate. She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on."

"You can either be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It all depends on how you view your life."

"Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: It's a tie! A lunatic, however, would say that what I have around my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of colored cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan, or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth.If a lunatic were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know."

"He felt the urge to go into the desert, to see if it's silence held the answers to his questions."

"One day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted. Do it now."

"She had just realized there were two things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune, when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, the fear of losing forever everything that is familiar."

"Basically, everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone. A lot of people go through the same difficulties we went through, and they react completely differently. We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality."

"God is the same, even though He has a thousand names; it is up to us to select a name for Him."

"When we first begin fighting for our dreams, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times."

"Everything depends on One Word : "Maktub" !"

"The more God asks us to participate in His mysteries, the more disoriented we become, because He asks us constantly to follow our dreams and our hearts. And that's difficult to do when we're used to living in a different way.Finally we discover, to our surprise, that God wants us to be happy, because He is the Father."

"And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."

"It was a prayer that he had never said before, because it was a prayer without words or pleas."

"Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere."

"The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them."