And with the passing years, what had once seemed like a miracle or the luckiest of chances and which he had always promised himself he would never become enslaved by, has gradually become his sole reason to go on living.

I learned that the search for God is a Dark Night, that Faith is a Dark Night. And that’s hardly a surprise really, because for us each day is a dark night. None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, and yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.

I don't try to control my days.

My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer, the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. Tell your heart that the fear of suffering s worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with Eternity.

People only give value to a thing if they have, at some point, been uncertain as to whether or not they'll get it.

We are not worshipping anyone or anything, we are simply communing with creation.

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