Paulo Coelho

Stories & Reflections

Character of the week: Maria

Author: Paulo Coelho

Maria and I, 2002

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EN ESPANOL AQUI: Personaje de la semana: Maria
EM PORTUGUES: Personagem da semana: Maria

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“At every moment of our lives we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”

“When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side… And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.”

“If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself.”

“If I’m looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre love out of my systems.”

“Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally come to realize that nothing really belongs to them.”

“The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon.”

“Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.”

“In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.”

“The great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”

Pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that brings only joy: love.

“Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.”

from the diary of Maria, the prostitute in ELEVEN MINUTES

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