Paulo Coelho

Stories & Reflections

No one changes destiny

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Paulo Coelho

Before a decisive battle, the Japanese general decided to take the initiative and attack, knowing that the enemy was greater in number. Although he was sure of his strategy, his men were fearful.

On the way to the confrontation, they decided to stop at a temple. After praying, the general turned to his soldiers:

– I will toss this coin. If it is heads, we return to camp. If it is tails, that means that the gods will protect us, and we shall defeat the enemy. Now, our future will be revealed.

He threw the coin high up, and the eyes of his anxious soldiers saw the result: tails. They all rejoiced, and as they attacked were filled with confidence and vigor, and were able to celebrate victory later that afternoon.

His chief officer said proudly:
– The gods are always right. No one can change the destiny they reveal.

– You are right, no one can change destiny when we are resolved to follow it. The gods help us, but at times we must help them too. – he replied, handing the officer the coin.

Both sides were tails.

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Quote of the Day

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Paulo Coelho

That is what infatuation is: the creation of an image of someone, without advising that someone as to what the image is… But it was different from love. Love was worth everything, and couldn’t be exchanged for anything.
(The Valkyries)

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Today’s Question by Aart Hilal

Author: Paulo Coelho

If there was a heaven and hell – as a writer what would you imagine each to be like?

I don’t think I have to imagine Heaven and Hell, there are many examples in our world that represent both.

Recently I read a very interesting book called ” The Lucifer Effect”by Philip Zimbardo. This book tells of an experiment conducted in the sixties in Standford University where students were chosen to carry out an experiment in the basement of the university. A prison was recreated and by the flip of a coin 7 students were held hostage while the other 7 students were the prison guards. The guards had absolute power over the victims (except for physical violence) and the experiment was meant to last 2 weeks. Yet, at the end of the 6th day the experiment had to be ceased – victims having nervous breakdowns. The guards, that unleashed their evil, had to go under therapy for years to come.

These normal individuals, given absolute power, started doing evil deeds, simply because they could – or didn’t do anything to avoid hell of breaking loose.

I was very impressed by this and I think that this experiment illustrates the fact that heaven and hell both dwell in our souls, just as light and darkness compose a day.

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During a full week in Myspace, I changed my mood from mischievous to nostalgic. Once done that, I started to receive messages from readers asking me what was wrong – given that some considered that being nostalgic was a bad thing in itself.
But I don’t think that being nostalgic for a week is such a problem.
So, here is the question of the week: how do see nostalgia?

P.S : For the next weeks, I shall be posting here the questions of the week under written form given that I will be travelling.

Dominating the world of Men and rising to the skies, The Mountain symbolizes in most cultures, the proximity of God. The clouds surrounding its top also convey its mystery and inaccessible nature. There is a considerable list of sacred mountains in which God revealed himself to men (Fujiyama, Sinai, Carmel, Olympus, etc).

Because of this, many pilgrimages are directed towards sacred mountains. In Japan for instance more than 200 000 pilgrims climb the Mont Fuji every year and in Pre-Colombian Mexico, The Rain God Tlaloc, was reverenced at the top of the Mountain of the same name.

In Christian iconography, the judge of the end of the times is often pictured as sitting on a mountain of clouds. All other mountains are flattened – which illustrates the end of pagan worship. It is also no coincidence that in the times where missionaries went to convert the people of central Europe, certain high places were considered as the dwelling of malefic sorcerers. There’s a parallel in the Tibetan cultures where it is said that bad spirits, called the Khadomas, constantly travel about in the height of mountains and incarnate in the form of women that try to disturb holy men.

Now you take the floor, what do you associate with the mountains?

Fantástico

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Jeff Jarvis*

Paulo Coelho certainly has nothing against selling books. He has sold an astounding 100m copies of his novels. But he also believes in giving them away. He is a pirate. Coelho discovered the power of free when a fan posted a Russian translation of one of his novels online and book sales there climbed from 3,000 to 100,000 to 1m in three years. “This happened in English, in Norwegian, in Japanese and Serbian,” he said. “Now when the book is released in hard copy, the sales are spectacular.”

So Coelho started linking to pirated versions of his books from his own website. But when he bragged about this at the Burda Digital Lifestyle Design conference in Munich last January, he got in trouble with his US publisher, HarperCollins, whose then head, Jane Friedman, called him.
Friedman had caught Coelho red-handed – one of the supposedly unauthorised versions he linked to had the author’s own notes in it. “She said, ‘Paulo, come on, don’t shit me’.” He was pirating himself.

(…)

For Coelho, digital is about relationships. The internet always is – and he is revelling in the new connections it gives him with his readers. He loves to meet them face-to-face. He mentioned on his blog that he’d like to invite a few readers to a party in a remote town in Spain and he was shocked that they were willing to fly in from as far away as Japan. Now he regularly invites readers to his parties.

“What should I do next?” he asked me in Paris. I was flummoxed because he’s doing so much. Then I suggested that the next time he’s in a cafe and bored, he should send a message to his fans via Twitter and his blog and I’ll just bet a few will be in the neighbourhood and will drop by to share a cup of coffee. For Coelho is not just an author to them now. He’s a friend.

*Jeff Jarvis is a journalism professor at the City University of New York and blogs at buzzmachine.com

You can digg this story : here

The master is like bell

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Paulo Coelho

A student who had recently arrived at the monastery, went to master Nokami and asked him how he should prepare for the exercise of meditation.

“Do not be afraid to ask” – was the reply.

“And how can I learn to ask?”

“A master is like a bell. If you strike it lightly, all you will heard is a gentle vibration. But if you bang it freely, it will resonate loudly and shake you to the depths of your soul. Ask with courage, and only stop when you obtain the answer you sought.”

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Quote of the Day

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Paulo Coelho

God is in the words, and the devil as well.
(The Valkyries)

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Today’s Question by Aart Hilal

Author: Paulo Coelho

Of all the books you have written and the characters you have created, which are the five of your favourites?

My characters are a snapshot of myself in a given moment of my life. They are the mirrors of my soul and therefore it is impossible for me to choose which one I like best.


To the One

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Paulo Coelho

To the one who understood her task and her purpose.
To the one who looked at the road ahead, and understood that it was a difficult journey.

To the one who did not make light of those difficulties,
but, on the contrary, made them manifest and visible.

To the one who makes the lonely feel they are not alone,
who satisfies those who hunger and thirst for justice, who makes the oppressor feel as bad as the oppressed.

To the one who always keeps her door open,
her ears listening, her hands working, her feet walking.

To the one who embodies the verses of another Persian poet,
Hafez, when he says: Not even seven thousand years of joy are worth seven days of sadness.

To the one who is here tonight, may she be one with all of us,
may her example multiply, may she still have difficult days ahead,
so that she can do whatever she needs to do,
so that the next generations will not have to strive
for what has already been accomplished.

And may she walk slowly,
because her peace is the peace of change,
and chage, real change, always takes time.

(Message from Paulo Coelho to honour Shirin Ebadi at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, Oslo, December 11th 2003).

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Up close and personal

Author: Paulo Coelho

By Paulo Coelho

Despite my being in this remote region, I wasn’t alone:
People were travelling with me through the words of my blog

The American journalist Jeff Jarvis has come by my house to interview me. Here I am, face to face with one of the most incisive technology journalists of today – via his blog BuzzMachine – and he is asking me what I think of the internet. I find the idea mind-boggling, to say the least; it would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when Google was a fledgling search engine and the internet a mystery to most of us.

Still, I had a suspicion at the time about the potential of this new medium, and I decided to launch my own website and newsletter, and opened an email account for readers who wanted to contact me. One of the myths about writers is that we write our books in lonely ivory towers; in my case, I was never very keen on the notion of the reclusive author working in solitude, and have always tried to interact with my readers.

So I’ve spent a lot of time on my website, knowing that it is one of the rare public platforms, besides the traditional book signing, open to me. Yet, despite the success of the site and newsletter, I felt that more could be done – but what? The answer is the result of ten years’ fascination with the medium.

My virtual journey

In 2006, I decided that, rather than separate myself from the world, I would take a different path. The road is made by walking – this is the first tenet of every adventure. You place your foot on uncharted terrain and from there the road somehow imposes itself on the walker. I left my house in France for three months, visiting Tunisia, Italy, Bulgaria and Ukraine, before I embarked on my Trans-Siberian journey, a 5,772-mile trip from Moscow to Vladivostok.

I shared my experiences every two to three days with readers from all over the globe via my blog. The feedback was incredible – despite my being in this remote region, I wasn’t alone: people were travelling with me through my words. The blog lasted a couple of months; I knew, though, that this first contact had to evolve somehow. But how?

Just like magic

When I returned home, I had a couple of months before the publication of my novel, The Witch of Portobello. I knew from previous experience that the free-sharing of my book over the internet would increase its visibility, so I didn’t hesitate to post it on peer-to-peer websites and on my blog.

The more I’ve ventured into the virtual world, the more I have realised that the internet has a logic of its own and its credo is: share everything freely. This was my message when I spoke at the “Digital, Life, Design” conference in Munich earlier this year.

The feedback from readers and media alike to the internet incarnation of The Witch of Portobello was such that I started a blog called the Pirate Coelho, where I posted links to free electronic copies of my books. Of course, this “underground” activity was undertaken without the knowledge of my publishers. But on the official side of things, I was also exploring as many ways as possible of communicating with my public via websites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube.

Share and share alike

Then, one day last year in Geneva, after visiting the blogs of some of my readers, I had an idea: why not work together? From this simple thought emerged the Experimental Witch project. I extended an online invitation to participate in a film adaptation of The Witch of Portobello. Aspiring film-makers were asked to film one of the 13 tales that the book interweaves and post the results on YouTube. Musicians could use MySpace to send ideas for the soundtrack.

Now, the submissions are all in, and the winning entries will be announced on my birthday, 24 August. Though some excellent work may be left aside in arriving at a manageable length for the film, this distant collaboration means I have been able to see the film my readers picture as they read my work.

So I looked at Jeff after he’d finished his questions, and asked him: “What else should I do?”

Apparently, Jeff thinks I’m doing just fine.

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Paulo Coelho and the Winner

Author: Paulo Coelho

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Today I received this box and inside of it I found my new book « The Winner is Alone » – the Brazilian edition that is coming out now in my country – and in the rest of the world throughout 2009.
As it always happens, I felt very excited about it – throughout the process of writing the book as well as seeing the physical object. It feels like a new baby and I still have the same feeling that I had when I released my first book “The Pilgrimage” in 1987.
So here’s my question of the week: What type of work gives you pleasure?

From the indistinct waters of the ocean, we now lift up our eyes to the unseen and omnipresent winds.
Symbolically, the Winds are first and foremost supernatural manifestations.
In Ancient Cultures they were identified with specific deities or wills of the gods. In Ancient Greece for instance, the harsh north wind Boreas abducts the daughter of the Athenian King Erechtheus – Oreithyia – and takes her to the Thrace, whilst the soft western wind Zephyr brings Psyche to Eros, the God of Love.

In the Bible, in the Ancient as well as the New Testament, the wind is often identified with the breath of God – and consequently his voice.
In the beginning of Times, it is said that the voice of God hovers over the surface of the indistinct primeval waters and that it is this wind that fertilizes the waters – the verb enabling the rest of the creation to manifest itself.

Yet, in many popular cultures, also emerges the view that takes the wind for the embodiment of transience and frivolity of men.
We seem then to see two visions collide : the vagabond winds of passion against the powerful verb of God.

Now you take the floor : what do you associate with the Winds?

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