Paulo Coelho: The Pilgrim

Paulo Coelho’s Best Story

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. ~ Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, from parents, Pedro Paulo Coelho and Lígia Coelho. In his youth, he attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded, “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, which was common for him since he was a policy debater when he was in high school, Coelho 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, Coelho’s introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution, from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. ”At his parents’ wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started using drugs in the 1960s. Before he dedicated entirely to literature, Paulo Coelho worked as a director, theater author, a journalist and music composer. He was also the director for record company, CBS, and The Underground Express newspaper; a theater professor, and the founder of the 2001 magazine.

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Currently Paulo Coelho writes weekly for 48 Brazilian journals and 22 other international newspapers. The Alchemist, his most famous novel, has been translated into 80 languages.