Paulo Coelho

When I was an adolescent I envied the great ballerinos among the kids on the block, and pretended I had other things to do at parties — like having a conversation. But in fact I was terrified of looking ridiculous, and because of that I would not risk a single step.

Until one day a girl called Marcia called out to me in front of everybody: Come on!

I said I did not like to dance, but she insisted.

Everyone in the group was looking, and because I was in love (love is capable of so many things!), I could refuse no further.

I did not know how to follow the steps, but Marcia did not stop; she went on dancing as if I were a Rudolf Nureyev.

Forget the others and pay attention to the bass, she whispered in my ear. Try to follow its rhythm.

At that moment I understood that we do not always have to learn the most important things; they are already part of our nature.

When we become adults, and when we grow old, we need to go on dancing. The rhythm changes, but music is part of life, and dancing is the consequence of letting this rhythm come inside us.

I still dance whenever I can. With dancing, the spiritual world and the real world manage to co-exist without any conflicts.

A baker wanted to get to know a great guru in his town a little better, so he invited him to dinner.

The day before, the guru went to the bakery disguised as a beggar, picked a bread roll off the display and began to eat it. The baker saw this and tossed him out into the street.

The following day, the guru and a disciple went to the baker’s house and were treated to a splendid banquet.

In the middle of the meal, the disciple asked, How does one tell a good man from a bad man?

Just look at this baker. He is capable of spending ten gold pieces on a banquet because I am famous, but is incapable of giving a piece of bread to feed a hungry beggar.

The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.
We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice.

And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoon

taken from THE PILGRIMAGE

(The Archer already in USA and in India  

You’re an archer yourself – what drew you to the sport? 

• I thought it was very elegant when I was young. I said to myself, One day, I am going to do this. So I started living in the Pyrenees, where I had a small house, and I met someone by chance. This person started teaching me how to use the bow and arrows, and he taught me the basics of archery. It is going from an extreme tension to a total relaxation, in the very moment you open your hand. And it is indeed elegant, because you need the posture to shoot well. It is about learning how to focus and doing this kind of exercise not for the sake of doing exercise, but for the sake of doing something you want to do. And so I learned.

How did your experiences with archery inform your writing of this book?

• It was, in a way, a breakdown of my experience in archery. And, of course, I had to have a guideline, a story. As you read, you learn everything I learned, everything I needed. Shooting arrows is not simply to hit a blank target, but really to try to see the world through the bow. The moment of total tension before you open your hand, the connection. Whether you reach the target or not is irrelevant. But what is relevant is to become the bow, the arrow, and the target its

Did a particular experience inspire you to write THE ARCHER?

• One day I was sitting in my house in the Pyrenees and I thought how incredible it was, the archery, and I wanted to write a book about my experience. I wanted to write it at least for me to read, or to condense for myself. I tried to teach myself what I learned instinctively. Sometimes, when you learn, you have to sit down and understand what it was that you learned. In doing so, I wrote the book. It is in your hands now.

 How do you feel the Santiago de Compostela has influenced your books, and specifically, this one?

• The Santiago de Compostela [pilgrimage] is this: you know your target, and you go towards there. It influenced me a lot in the sense that I knew I had to focus on one point and move ahead.

THE ARCHER provides simple guidelines for a life well lived. Do you think a fable or allegory is the most effective mode for teaching what you’ve learned about life’s essential truths?

• It is a short book, you don’t need to complicate things.*Laughs* In fact, life is simple. We complicate a lot. And a fable or allegory talks to the hidden parts of ourselves. You learn the essence of life by paying attention to the simple things that surround you. This is basically the idea of THE ARCHER. I’m talking about everything from friendship and beyond: the importance of the bow, the importance of concentration. At the end of the day, it is life. You learn by living your life fully

Have you ever had a mentor like Tetsuya? If so, what teachings did you learn?

• Not in the metaphorical sense that I use in my book. I had a mentor in the sense that I needed to learn the basics of how to shoot, how to avoid harming myself. I am very grateful to him because he was the one who taught me what I know. But at the end of the day, like I said, you learn by doing something. Something that you love. So really, you don’t need a mentor – you just need the steps. Once the steps are taken, you can move ahead, and you repeat and repeat until one day, it’s not that it becomes automatic, but somehow, your subconscious takes over yourself and go on

Do you try to follow Tetsuya’s example when you mentor younger writers?

• I don’t mentor younger writers. Who am I to mentor anyone about anything? Of course, I get invitations for Master Classes, but I never accept because I have nothing to teach. I think writing is an experience in and of itself.

Can you tell us about the spiritual and religious influences on your writing?  How do you feel about THE ALCHEMIST being used by many readers as a spiritual guide, and do you see readers turning to THE ARCHER in the same way?

• Of course, I hope that in the steps of THE ARCHER, people will see the same journey that exists in THE ALCHEMIST. Of course, they are different. THE ALCHEMIST is a travelling book and, though THE ARCHER is too, I hope people use THE ARCHER to help them learn the basics of life. I really do hope this.

What do you hope readers will get out of THE ARCHER?

• It is impossible to tell what he or she hopes, because all readers experience the book in different ways. I get a lot of letters about my books, and sometimes, they see things that I didn’t see, and tell me about them. I am very glad to read these, because I learn from them. I learn with them, about myself.

EN ESPANOL: Puercoespines
EM PORTUGUES: Os Porcos-Espinhos

During the Ice Age many animals died because of the cold. Seeing this situation, the porcupines decided to group together, so they wrapped up well and protected one another.

But they hurt one another with their thorns, and so then they decided to stay apart from one another.

They started to freeze to death again.
So they had to make a choice: either they vanished from the face of the earth or they accepted their neighbor’s thorns.

They wisely decided to stay together again. They learned to live with the small wounds that a very close relationship could cause, because the most important thing was the warmth given by the other.

And in the end they survived.

(taken from “Like a Flowing River”)