Paulo Coelho "The Zahir"

"when the unwanted guest arrives....

I might be afraid

I might smile or say:

My day was good, let night fall.

You will find the fields ploughed, the houase
clean,

the table set,

and everything in its place."

"we choose to stay outside, outside a world that is fast
collapsing,outside people who have live in constant fear losing something, who
walk along the street as if everything was fine , when , in fact , everything is
bad, very bad indeed! Don't you beg too? you ask for alms from your boss to pay
the owner of your apartment? Aren't you ashamed of wasting your
life?'

" ofcourse they know" replies the nomad. "How many people do you know who
say : I've never done what I wanted, but then, that's life. If they say
they haven't done what they wanted, then , at some point they must have
known what it was that they did want . As for life , its just a story that other
people tel us about the world and about how we should behave in the world"

" Finally he explained that suffering occurs when we
want other people to love us in the way we imagine we want to be loved,
and not in the way that love should manifest itself- free and untrammelled,
guiding us with its force and driving us on."

"He died while he was still alive"

"Marie, lets suppose that two fireman go into a forest to put out
a fire. afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream,the face of the one
is all smeared with black, while the other man's face is completely clean, My
question is this : which of the two will wash his face?"

"No the one with the dirty face will look at theother man and assume
that he looks like him. And ,vice versa,. "