PAULO COELHO

"When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."

"If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him."

"So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you."

"You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say."

"If you love someone, you must be prepared to set them free."

"Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is."

"He knew one of the women well, and had shared his universe with her. They had seen the same mountains, and the same trees, although each of them had seem them differently. She knew his weaknesses, his moments of hatred, of despair. Yet she was there at his side. They shared the same universe."

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."

"A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

"Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping."

"Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success."

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."

"Hearts are made to be broken."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past."

"I can resist anything except temptation."

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects."

"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself."

"It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it."

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."

"I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after."

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike."

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one."

"Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing."

"No good deed goes unpunished."

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

"One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry."

"Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer."

"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."