Monthly Archive for January, 2008

When you were 17 your parents had sent you to an asylum because they thought you were psychotic. And now you are the world’s biggest-selling novelist! How has been the journey?
 

My parents locked me up three times in a lunatic asylum. The reasons in my medical files are banal. It was said that I was isolated, hostile and miserable at school. I was not crazy but I was rather just a 17-year-old who really wanted to become a writer. Because no one understood this, I was locked up for months and fed with tranquilisers. The therapy merely consisted of giving me electroshocks. They were intended to clear the uppermost layer of my memory in order to bring peace to my head. I promised to myself that one day I would write about this experience, so young people will understand that we have to fight for our own dreams from a very early stage of our lives. The message in “Veronika decides to die” is that: dare to be different. You are unique, and you have to accept you as you are, instead of trying to repeat other people’s destinies or patterns. Insanity is to behave like someone that you are not. Normality is the capacity to express your feelings. From the moment that you don’t fear to share your heart, you are a free person. I was a rebel. I was opposite everything, and that is actually a good thing to be when you are young of age. My parents tried to make me behave properly. The tried everything from threats, to complain about how much I let them down, but nothing worked. They thought they had lost control, and said to themselves: “He is mad. He wants to be an artist”. And then they committed me to this institution and I learned at very young age that I had to fight. I chose not to look at myself as a victim but thought ” Paulo, now you are experiencing the difficulties that real artists actually should experience.”