Top 2109 Quotes & Sayings by Paulo Coelho - Page 2

MySpace is my wife... Facebook is my mistress.

I don't go to parties in general.

My readers - and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

I never say I am a guru.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

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.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you're really tired. It's my relaxing time.

Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you.

I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

I can't consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

When you write an article about anything, trolls use the comments to attack. They feel frustrated - but haters are losers. It's not good to feed this aspect. It's more intelligent to be constructive.

I'm modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.

The only thing that relaxes me is archery. That's why I have to have apartments with gardens.

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.

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.

I have been practicing archery for a long time; a bow and arrow helps me to unwind.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I hate to be smart.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

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.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

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.

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.

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.

MySpace is an addiction.

Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.

I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.

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.

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.

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.

Writing is a solitary experience. I'm extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It's so intimate, I can't even share it with my wife.

I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.

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.

Publishers see free downloads as threatening the sales of the book.

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.

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 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.

This may sound a little bit idealistic, but when I go to my blog, my Facebook page, my Twitter account, I talk to different people from all over the world, and you see how it's easy to establish a dialogue.

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.

Everything for me is sacred, beginning with earth, but also going to things made by man.

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.

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.

There is an afterlife. I am convinced of this.

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.

Physical elegance, which is what I am talking about here, comes from the body. This is no superficial matter, but rather the way that man found to honour the way he places his two feet on the ground.

Twitter is my bar. I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations, starting others, feeling the atmosphere.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

It's very difficult to read a book on your computer.

I don't set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true.

You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you.

We don't need to explain our love. We only need to show it.

Don't give to anyone the power to put you down. Haters are losers pretending to be winners.