Sunday, March 15, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Quotes from "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho.
Just to prove why I like that book.
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 loves out of my system.
The little experience of life I've had has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an illusion-- and that applies to material as well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever (as had happened often enough to me already) finally comes to realise that nothing belongs to them.
And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my life looking after things that aren't mine. It's best to live as if today were the first (or last) day of my life.
I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.
But before I die, I want to fight for life. If I can walk on my own, I can go wherever I like.
I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but that once it startsm they are terrifed and want the cars to stop. Having chosen adventure, shouldn't they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and downs and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?
The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it's taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it's mountaineering; it's wanting to get to the very top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don't manage it.
However, if I believe that the track is my destiny and that God is in charge of the machine, then the nightmare becomes something thrilling. It becomes exactly what it is, a roller coaster, a safe, reliable toy, which will eventually stop, but while the journey lasts, I must look at the surrounding landscape and whoop with excitement.
I didn't ask to be born, I've never found anyone to love me, I've always made the wrong decisions-- now I'm letting life decide for me.
I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write and write about love-- otherwise my soul won't survive.
...freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly. And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free.
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.
I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.
That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.
What the eyes don't see, the heart does grieve over.
Yes, I love you very much, as I have never loved another man, and that is precisely why I am leaving, because if I stayed, the dream would become reality, the desire to possess, to want your life to be mine... in short, all the things that transform love into slavery. It's best left like this-- a dream.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought the last bit was the most sensible part of all.
I know that the worst thing you can do with quotes from a single book is to lay them all out at one go. because quotes are meant to be unexpected, and sometimes, decorative. but i'm too lazy to contextualise them, and to flip the book or my diary just to find one quote.
the bolded parts are literal materialisations of my own thoughts. thank you paulo coelho for writing what my heart speaks, but cannot express.