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"You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you."

"You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness. God chose you to be different. Why are you disappointing God with this kind of attitude?"

"The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions — hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity — also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem."

"Look me in the eye and never forget what I'm about to tell you. There are only two prohibitions, one according to man's law, the other according to God's. Never force a sexual relationship on anyone, because that is considered to be rape. And never have sexual relations with children, because that is the worst of all sins. Apart from that, you're free. There's always someone who wants exactly what you want."

"Veronika brought her interior monologue to a close and made a promise to herself: she would not leave Villete alive. It was best to put an end to everything now, while she was still brave and healthy enough to die."

"I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living."

"When she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think "this must be heaven". Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain — which started a fraction of a second later — was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain — unique, unmistakable."

"She believed herself to be completely normal. Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining, many people would agree with her. The first reason: everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure of friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering only increased. The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going on in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right — that gave her a sense of complete powerlessness."

"On 11 November 1997, Veronika decided that the moment to kill herself had — at last! — arrived."

"A warrior of the light never confuses tension with anxiety."

"Warriors of the light are not perfect. Their beauty lies in accepting this fact and still desiring to grow and to learn."

"Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons. Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light. Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties. Every Warrior of the Light has said "yes" when he wanted to say "no." Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved. That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is. Each stone, each bend cries welcome to him. He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field. Then, accepting the help of God and of God's signs, he allows his personal legend to guide him toward the tasks that life has reserved for him. On some nights, he has nowhere to sleep, on others he suffers from insomnia. "That's just how it is," thinks the warrior. "I was the one who chose to walk this path." In these words lies all his power: He chose the path along which he is walking and so has no complaints."

"I am going to sit here with you by the river. If you go home to sleep, I will sleep in front of your house. And if you go away, I will follow you — until you tell me to go away. Then I'll leave. But I have to love you for the rest of my life."

"Even if loving meant leaving, or solitude, or sorrow, love was worth every penny of its price."

"Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."

"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."

"Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us."

"Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown — even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to."

"There's nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs."

"Love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control."

"Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again."

"Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks."

"You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist — that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists — a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles."

"Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old."

"The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not. They don't care if when you go, you leave behind a lover, a home, a career, or a dream. The gods don't care whether you have it all, whether it seems that your every desire can be met through hard work and persistence. The gods don't want to know about your plans and your hopes. Somewhere they're throwing the dice — and you are chosen. From then on, winning or losing is only a question of luck. The gods throw the dice, freeing love from its cage. And love can create or destroy — depending on the direction of the wind when it is set free."

"We must never forget that spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love. And with love, there are no rules."

"Perhaps they needn't even believe — it was enough that they needed angels, and the angels would return gladly."

"The parents always insisted on telling their child that their secret friends didn't exist — perhaps because they had forgotten that they too had spoken to their angel at one time. Or, who knows, perhaps they thought they lived in a world where there was no longer any place for angels. Disenchanted, the angels had returned to God's side, knowing that they could no longer impose their presence."

"Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."

"Your money saved us for three days. It's not often that money saves a person's life."

"No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it."

"Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World. … It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that's where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

"It's true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until, someday, the Soul of the World becomes one thing only."

"Wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure."

"The wise men understood that this natural world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That's what I mean by action."

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

"It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn."

"A grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it."

"There is only one way to learn … It's through action."

"If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return."

"Don't think about what you've left behind, the alchemist said to the boy as they began to ride across the sands of the desert. "Everything is written in the Soul of the World, and there it will stay forever.""

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

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

"The desert takes our dreams away from us, and they don't always return. We know that, and we are used to it. Those who don't return become a part of the clouds, a part of the animals that hide in the ravines and of the water that comes from the earth. They become part of everything... They become the Soul of the World."

"If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise," said the seer. "If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur."

"If I am really a part of your dream, you'll come back one day."

"We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

"He had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe cause that wasn't really his dream."

"As he mused about these things, he realised that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure."

"Life attracts life."