“Sometimes, we are so attached to our way of life that we turn down wonderful opportunities simply because don’t know what to do with it.”

“I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.”

“Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.”

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

Physical elegance, which is what I am talking about here, comes from the body. This is no superficial matter, but rather the way that man found to honour the way he places his two feet on the ground.

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

Beauty is the greatest seducer of man.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing

I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

I have spent every New Year's Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It's a place with meaning for me.

Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.

“Happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.”

 “Whatever you decide to do, make sure it makes you happy.”

“A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.”

“Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.”

“However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.”

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.

When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution - they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

It's not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

I can't consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, opinions.

About the idea of a clash between cultures, between civilisations, I don't believe in it. It's something some political leaders tried to use, and that the media tried and are still trying to sell us, in order to simplify the world and their work.

Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I'm going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.

The only thing that relaxes me is archery. That's why I have to have apartments with gardens. 

I hate to be smart.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

MySpace is an addiction.

Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.

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

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

There is an afterlife. I am convinced of this.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that's it. I don't tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.

My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

I am 100 per cent Virgo, stubborn, over-organised, slightly abstracted from the rest of the world.

I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.

No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

I'm not a person that socializes very well.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” 

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” 

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” 

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”