Paulo Coelho Quotes

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

It strikes me every time I do an interview that I don't really sit around thinking about my goals and my life and my career. I do what I love doing and I get a lot of feedback. I'm free as a bird, you know? If I do something good, it's, 'Wow, that was brilliant,' and if I do something bad, it just goes away.

Working on my own gave me a chance to take my time and experiment a lot.

There's no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

I just write what comes along. I don't have a detailed master plan.

I'll do anything that sparks me. Sometimes I'll want to do something random with ballet, and then I'll want to be a hippie caterpillar in an animation film. Who knows what will come my way, but I'm going to try and put little hints into the universe, and hopefully they'll float on by.

There is something transformative about the act of finding your own way without a to-do list.

I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.

It's empowering to be asked to look at what's possible, not told how to do it.

I don't wait to be struck by lightning and I don't need certain slants of light in order to be able to write.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

I couldn't say I ever dreamt of becoming a composer, a pianist, or anything else for that matter. I have the kind of brain where nothing is set in stone.

Back when I taught middle school and wrote adult mysteries, my students often asked me why I wasn't writing for kids. I never had a good answer for them. It took me a long time to realize they were right.

I am the freest author in the world.

I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life.

In 10 years, I don't really know what I'll be, and I like not having any idea. I like the idea of being so passionate about everything I do and the fact that I might wake up tomorrow and say 'I want to be a chef,' and just pour myself into that.

I don't like the idea of spirituality done the way it's done. The only way I could understand it was through creativity, not by going to an Ashram, or finding a guru or joining a temple. I made work out of it.

I've been in LA for 5 years now, and it's been very freeing creatively.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

I always try to keep the circumstances in my life fresh. I like to change the physical environment I live in, change the people around me and try to experience things for the first time. I think that keeps one on their toes, creatively and spiritually.

Every time I write a song I feel really lucky and kind of surprised. Not surprised that I wrote it, but just surprised that things exist that you don't know about.

A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

We always have a take that's 'one for fun', so once you've got what you need, you can do what you like. Something does occasionally pop out of that tree. I'm always open to ideas.