Be happy when you reach the top: cry, clap your hands, shout to the four winds that you did it, let the wind - the wind is always blowing up there - purify your mind, refresh your tired and sweaty feet, open your eyes, clean the dust from your heart. It feels so good, what was just a dream before, a distant vision, is now part of your life, you did it!

When we're interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena "signs," the sceptics "coincidence," and psychologists "concentrated focus," although I've yet to find out what term historians should use).

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.

Don't think about what you've left behind.

The journey towards the top of the mountain is always longer than you think. Don't fool yourself: the moment will come where what seemed to be close to you is in fact still very far away.

I understand that everything is connected, that all roads meet, and that all rivers flow into the same sea.

Nothing will behave in the logical way you have come to expect.