‘I’m the one who should feel ashamed for being unable to arouse them, but, no, they always blame themselves.’
To avoid such embarrassments, Maria always tried to put men at their ease, and if someone seemed drunker or more fragile than usual, she would avoid full sex and concentrate instead on caresses and masturbation, which always seemed to please them immensely, absurd though this might seem, since they could perfectly well masturbate on their own.
She had to make sure that they didn’t feel ashamed. These men, so powerful and arrogant at work, constantly having to deal with employees, customers, suppliers, prejudices, secrets, posturings, hypocrisy, fear and oppression, ended their day in a nightclub and they didn’t mind spending three hundred and fifty Swiss francs to stop being themselves for a night.

 

• “Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  

   “At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  

   “It is not time that changes man nor knowledge the only thing that can change someone's mind is love.”
  

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  
  
  

   “Love is not to be found in someone else but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person.”

  
  
   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  

   “Sometimes, you get no second chance and that its best to accept the gifts the world offers you.” 
  
  

  ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  
  

   “When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left!”

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  
  

   “I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion & adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a housewife & a prostitute, both of us living in the same body & doing battle with each other. The meeting of these two women is a game with serious risks. A divine dance. When we meet, we are two divine energies, two universes colliding. If the meeting is not carried out with due reverence, one universe destroys the other.”

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  
  
  

   “A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
  
  
  
  

   “In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.”

   ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
   
  Reviews
   

   

  In comparison to my experiences with his other pieces. I can confidently say that this Paulo Cohelo work tests the reader in a unique and dangerous way.
  
  Each of his novels teach valuable lessons for adults through the interesting happenings of his protagonists. This story does the same. However the lesson taught borders on relationship counseling and sexual education. It was just as compelling and effective as it was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in the sense that the information being learned as one reads each chapter is not theirs to have. He accomplishes this through the less than innovative approach of journal or diary entries, but envertheless, it is striking how moving it is to read the sexual and romantic discoveries of a conventional young lady.
  
  A book that is difficult to put down. A must-read for many, but especially those who have not yet discoveredy what makes them tick, oo and ahhh. Again, an inspiration!

 

Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. In short, he was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.

One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two traveled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.

But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird's ability to fly.

And she felt alone.

And she thought: "I'm going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again."

The bird who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.

She looked at the bird everyday. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: "Now you have everything you could possibly want." However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds.

If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. "Why have you come?" she asked Death. "So that you can fly once more with him across the sky," Death replied. "If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again."

So now I think that passage from the book already ate up my review so I'll just add some extra things.

First: As expected from Paulo Coelho this is another philosophical somewhat self-help, inspirational novel. This book was actually dedicated to a fan named Maurice Gravelines and Coelho met this guy unintentionally when he visited the Grotto in Lourdes. When they met the guy was like "You know, you look just like Paulo Coelho." And then Coelho said that yeah it was really him. And then the guy embraced him and he said to Coelho that, "They(Coelho's books) make me dream." I think that pretty sum up what kind of books Coelho's are.

Second: This book actually talks a lot about sex so I really recommend this book to adult readers, 18 years old and above. The novel has some masturbation scenes, BDSM, a blowjob scene etc. It just talks a lot about orgasm and in the other hand it also talks about the sacredness of sex and some history of prostitution blah blah blah. So really, adult readers or if you're sensitive about sex or anything about it maybe this book is not for you.

Third: My only complain about this book is that...there's actually a Filipino character in this book and she's a prostitute in the book and she's Maria's friend. My only problem about her is her name which is Nyah. I just really find her name weird and not very quote and quote Filipino. Maybe the author did not have time to research on it but the common names of Filipinos are similar to Spanish names and American names so I just really find it odd that her name's Nyah since it doesn't sound like a Filipino name. Maybe he could just name that character Juana or Ana or Susan but to name her Nyah, it was just odd. *shoulder shrug*

 

Some of my friends were raving about Coelho's "The Alchemist"; however, my first encounter with his writing is this book. I'm a little bit disappointed, though, because I expected more.