Paulo Coelho Quotes

Sometimes when we awaken from the bad dream of disowning ourselves, we think that the sojourn to self-discovery is a new one. But it is an ancient quest.

The real rub is finding that authentic self and it's not something that's going to come to you overnight.

To explore different parts of yourself and different emotional lives... not to hide from who you are but to actually explore who you are.

Well, I think that in every character there are little bits and pieces of yourself.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

It's not about finding a home so much as finding yourself.

I think a lot of Magnum was me.

The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest for the source of his being.

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

All of my characters, I feel, have some essence of who I am in them.

A lot of people go on this journey of finding themselves and then eventually realize that their true self wasn't on the outside but it's always been there.

For me, Miranda has always been a much deeper character than the three-minute videos I put online.

You've got to find yourself first. Everything else'll follow.

Life is a constant challenge to know oneself.

I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.

The final mystery is oneself... Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul.

You've decided to love me for eternity, I'm still deciding who I want to be today.

The most dangerous thing you can do is know who you are.

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime’s work, but it’s worth the effort.

How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

We read books to find out who we are.

I think the goal is always to go deeper within myself, and accept myself on deeper levels and to know myself on deeper levels. Whether or not I look for roles that are going to do that for me, I certainly look for the ways in which the roles I get can do that for me.