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Paulo Coelho
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pencil on paper
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21cm x 30cm
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unframed
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Sold
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£4 print incl. UK P&P
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a teenager, Paulo wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?" After researching, Paulo concluded that a writer "always wears glasses and never combs his hair" and has a "duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation," amongst other things. At 17, his introversion and opposition to follow a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institute from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. He later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me.
Later he enrolled and dropped out of Law School, travelled living life as a hippie, immersing himself in the drug culture of the 60’s. Returning to Brazil he worked as a songwriter, actor and journalist before pursuing his dream to be a writer.
In 1986, Paulo walked the 500mile Road of Santiago de Compostela, on the path he had a spiritual awakening and began writing full-time. The following year he wrote the Alchemist, which became a best seller in Brazil and has now sold over 60million copies world-wide. To date he has published 26 books, for the most part, works of fiction rooted in his life experiences.
Some of his quotes:
No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes.
My mother told me when I was a child: the world is a mirror of yourself. She was right.
Change. But start slowly, because direction is more important than speed.