Quotes From "Veronika Decides To Die" By Paulo Coelho

1
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? Paulo Coelho
I want to continue being crazy; living my life the...
2
I want to continue being crazy; living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be. Paulo Coelho
Collective madness is called sanity ..
3
Collective madness is called sanity .. Paulo Coelho
4
You don't seem mad at all, ' she said. But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete? Paulo Coelho
5
In a few more days I'd anticipated telling Veronika that our injections had cured her heart condition. But in light of her unscheduled departure form Villette my telling that particular lie will not be required. The majority of people who attempt suicide repeat that attempt until they succeed. I took a risk in lying to her about her condition, i decided to test the only remedy i have come to have any faith in: awareness of life. Until she finds out from some other doctor that she is perfectly healthy. She'll consider each day a miracle. Which in my view it is. . Paulo Coelho
In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the...
6
In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die? Paulo Coelho
Because it seemed too simple to accept that life was...
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Because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith. Paulo Coelho
8
Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous. . Paulo Coelho
Nothing in this world happens by chance.
9
Nothing in this world happens by chance. Paulo Coelho
10
Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that, ' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear. Paulo Coelho
Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their...
11
Because when everyone dreams, but only a few realize their dreams, that makes cowards of us all. Paulo Coelho
12
Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could. Paulo Coelho
13
Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: It's a tie! A lunatic, however, would say that what I have around my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of colored cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan, or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth. If a lunatic were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know. Paulo Coelho
If only everyone could know and live with their inner...
14
If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness. Would the world be a worse place for it? No, people would be fairer and happier. Paulo Coelho
15
Then 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. Paulo Coelho
16
She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure. Paulo Coelho
17
People just can’t cope with happiness. Paulo Coelho
18
The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter. Paulo Coelho
19
Insanity is the ability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there. Paulo Coelho
20
Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective ways of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it, the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone is your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not the other?. Paulo Coelho
21
It’s whatever the majority deems it to be. It’s not necessarily the best or the most logical, but it’s the one that has become adapted to the desires of society as a whole. Paulo Coelho
22
Society had more and more rules, and laws that contradicted the rules, and new rules that contradicted the laws. People felt too frightened to take even a step outside the invisible regulations that guided everyone's lives. Paulo Coelho
23
Madness is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you, but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there." 'We've all felt that.' 'And all of us, one way or another, are mad. Paulo Coelho
24
Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death? Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem Paulo Coelho
25
Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I felt as if nature was in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. Paulo Coelho
26
I had never heard her sound so calm, so resigned to her fate. She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on. Paulo Coelho
27
Basically, everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone. A lot of people go through the same difficulties we went through, and they react completely differently. We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality Paulo Coelho
28
Oddly enough I never used to suffer from depression on cold, gray, cloudy days like this. I feel as if nature is in harmony with me, that it reflected my soul. On the other hand, when the sun appeared, the children would come out to play in the streets, and everyone was happy that it was such a lovely day, and then I would feel terrible, as if that display of exuberance in which i could not participate was somehow unfair. Paulo Coelho
29
She would consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences. Paulo Coelho
30
Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint. Paulo Coelho
31
We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear Paulo Coelho
32
She was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on. Paulo Coelho
33
People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves. Paulo Coelho
34
As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually FELT them, and they were no longer necessary, they could leave. Paulo Coelho
35
She hated the love she had been given, because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature Paulo Coelho
36
Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. Paulo Coelho
37
When I took the pills, I wanted to kill someone I hated. I didn't know that other Veronikas existed inside me, Veronikas that I could love. Paulo Coelho
38
She was fighting for something, she feltalive and capable of responding to the challenges facing her. Paulo Coelho
39
It's best to accept life as it really is and not as I imagined it to be Paulo Coelho
40
Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It’s a distortion of nature, it goes against God’s laws, for in all the world’s woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it’s insane to be different, and that’s why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?” Mari nodded. “People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known. Paulo Coelho
41
Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have courage to complain, that's their problem. Paulo Coelho
42
That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say. Paulo Coelho
43
That's all anyone has, and it's always brief, although, of course, some people believe they have a past where they can accumulate things and a future where they will accumulate still more. By the way, speaking of the present moment, do you masturbate a lot? Paulo Coelho
44
An intense life needs a touch of madness. Paulo Coelho
45
All you had to do was to keep your insanity undercontrol Paulo Coelho
46
Stay insane, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention. Concentrate on this flower and allow the real "I" to reveal itself. Paulo Coelho
47
She didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane. Paulo Coelho
48
In the small central square of Ljubljana, the statue of the poet stares fixedly at something. If you follow his gaze, you will see, on the other side of the square, the face of a woman carved into the stone of one of the houses. That was where Julia had lived. Even after death, Prešeren gaze for all eternity on his Impossible love. Paulo Coelho
49
A lot of people think something is right, and so that thing becomes right. Paulo Coelho