Brida

• “She may have been young, but she knew the harm that loneliness could do to some people, especially as they got older.”
• “Sometimes we set off down a path simply because we don't believe in it. It's easy enough. All we have to do then is prove that it isn't the right path for us. However, when things start to happen, and the path does reveal itself to us, we become afraid of carrying on.”
• “... she didn't understand why so many people chose to spend their whole life destroying paths they didn't even want to follow, instead of following the one path that would lead somewhere.”
• “Everything in the Universe has life, and you must always try to stay in contact with that life. It understands your language. And the world will begin to take on a different meaning for you.”
• “The more your understand yourself, the more you will understand the world. And the closer you will be to your Soulmate ”
• “You had to take risks, follow some paths and abandon others. She remembered Wicca telling her about people who followed certain paths only to prove that they weren't the right ones, but that wasn't as bad as choosing a path and then spending the rest of your life wondering if you'd made the right choice.”
• “That was the Dark Night, and no one could ever escape the Dark Night, even if they never made a decision, even if they lacked the courage to change anything, because that in itself was a decision, a change,”
• “Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride he knew, because it was the most destructive way of being different.”
• “Nothing will behave in the logical way you have come to expect. You will understand things only with your heart, and that can be a little frightening. For a long time, the journey will seem like a Dark Night, but then any search is an act of faith.”
• “because when you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to the understanding of all the mysteries.”

The Alchemist

• “Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
• “What's the world's greatest lie? ... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.”
• “In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers become more important for them than their own Personal Legends.”
• “He realised: If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.”
• “There was a moment of silence so profound that it seemed the city was asleep.”
• “I don't want to change anything, because I don't know how to deal with change, I'm used to the way I am.”
• “But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. Even someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”
• “But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.”
• “Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive... and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognise that it is working for us.”
• “Even though I complain sometimes, ... it's because I'm the heart of a person, and people's hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when those things happen, we suffer terribly.”
• “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

• “Life taught me that we can learn, and it taught me that we can change, even when it seems impossible.”
• “I wanted to sit with him in a cafe and remember the old days, when we had thought the world was far too large for anyone ever to know it truly.”
• “No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes. And any woman with the least bit of sensitivity can read the eyes of a man in love.”
• “In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire. Anything else is fantasy.”
• “To love, ... To those wise enough to understand that sometimes love is nothing more than the foolishness of childhood, the wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love,”
• “I was sure I could never fall in love with someone like him. I knew him to well, all his weaknesses and fears. I just couldn't admire him as the others seemed to.”
• “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.”
• “The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we know the effort required to keep them alive.”
• “This was a silence that spoke for itself. A silence that said we no longer needed to explain things to each other.”
• “You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”
• “Love doesn't need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speak for itself. ... the silence had allowed our hearts to approach each other and get to know each other better.”
• “But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice or 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 stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life.”
• “... but time, age, and the feeling that I was a logical and practical person distanced me from religion.”
• “The moment we begin to seek love, live behind to seek us. And to save us.”
• “And happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.”
• “Love doesn't ask many questions, because if we stop to think we become fearful. It's an inexplicable fear; it's difficult even to describe it.”
• “I think that when we look for love courageously, it reveals itself, and we wind up attracting even more love. If one person really wants us, everyone does. But if we're alone, we become even more alone. Life is strange.”

The Devil and Miss Prym

• “... you shouldn't believe in promises. The world is full of them: promises of riches, of enteral salvation, of infinite love. Some people think they can promise anything, others accept whatever seems to guarantee better days ahead, ... Those who make promises they don't keep end up powerless and frustrated, and exactly the same fate awaits those who believe those promises.”
• “She was all too familiar with the silence of this remote place, which signified not peace and tranquility, but a total absence of new things to say.”
• “Playing the part of a charitable soul was only for those who were afraid of taking a stand in life. It is always easier to hear an insult and not retaliate than have the courage to fight back against someone stronger than yourself; ... when we're alone ... that we can silently grieve over our own cowardice.”
• “I spend the whole day looking at nature. Some people think it's a waste of time, but it was the only way I could find to accept the loss of someone I loved very much.”
• “The girl who was reading a book all on her own beneath a sunshade, pretending she didn't care, but inside was terrified of spending the rest of her life alone.”
• “... for the dead never age, ...”
• “I too tried to look at matters from a more generous perspective: I didn't succeed. But now I've gained courage; I've reached the depths and discovered that there is light at the bottom.”
• “Do what your heart commands, and God will be happy.”
• “Evil needed to manifest itself if Good was finally to move the hearts of these people.”
• “If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.”
• “Evil was bound to pass Viscos, because the Devil was always abroad in the Earth, trying to catch people unawares.”
• “... because silence does not always mean consent — usually all it meant was that people were incapable of coming up with an immediate response.”
• “... and although the last day of her life had been cold, it had been filled with sunlight — not everyone had the good fortune to leave the world with such a beautiful memory of it.”
• “Evil will never bring Good, however much they wanted to believe it would.”

The Zahir

• “How could they possibly know if they were in the mood or not if they never tried? But there was no point in asking; the truth was they were afraid of any change they would upset the world they had grown used to.”
• “I've seen the same infinite bitterness in everyone's eyes, a sadness which people weren't always prepared to acknowledge, but which, regardless of what they were telling me was nevertheless there.”
• “I don't believe in the curative power of suffering and tragedy; they happen because they're part of life and shouldn't be seen as a punishment.”
• “False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives.”