Paulo Coelho Quotes

When the beginnings of self destruction enter the heart, it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.

why can't we love the right people? what is so wrong with us that we rush into situations to which we are manifestly unsuited, which will hurt us and others? why are we given emotions which we cannot control and which move in exact contradiction to what we really want? we are walking conflicts, internal battles on legs.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

Every man is his own chief enemy.

I think the main thing I remembered throughout all of filming it was just that she just was extremely self-destructive. I think everybody can relate to that a little bit. She doesn't like herself.

Personal disintegration remains always an imminent danger.

You get tangled up in your own ego of how you're perceived. You can lose your way.

I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my unworthiness to be alive.

I don't know what I am. And it's not important.

It's been said to me that I'm self-destructive because I'll walk away from things that are good.

Man has no greater enemy than himself.

I have this part in myself that sometimes gets me into situations that can never end well, just because I want to prove to myself that I'm no good.

Growing up, I naturally embraced who I was, but I was always battling with myself. So I spent half my time being proud of being a woman and the other half completely hating it.

I hit this point - I guess you'd say an end of a chapter - where I felt like I kind of did everything. I wasn't interested in music. It was a really strange feeling, and needless to say, it freaked me out a little bit. I really started to go inward and say, 'Hey, what is this about?'

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

Each man kills the things he loves. I recognise that in myself - in relationships, even with guitars - beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed.

...a disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings.

How was it possible to wake up every day and be recognizable to another when so often one was barely recognizable to oneself?

I wonder if I will ever have the strength to hold onto something. Or if I will always be someone who destroys.

If I think, I am lost.

It's not important what other people call you. If you yourself know you're a fake, that's tougher to live with.

When did I stop being me?

She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly.

If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.

As I go clowning my sentimental way into eternity, wrestling with all my problems of estrangement and communion, sincerity and simulation, ambition and acquiescence, I shuttle between worrying whether I matter at all and whether anything else matters but me.