Fairy tales had been her first experience of the magical universe, and more than once she had wondered why people ended up distancing themselves from that world, knowing the immense joy that childhood had brought to their lives.
"This is why alchemy exists," the boy said. "So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold. That's what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too."
Don't expect your genius to be discovered; do what you must do because it gives you joy. Don't expect your love to be accepted. Love because it justifies your life.
Happiness is this place that, once you arrive there, you have nothing else to do. You get bored. Passion is this up and down; it's like a rollercoaster, you know, and much more interesting to me.
But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
There was a time when people accepted magical experiences as natural. There were no priests then, and no one went chasing after the secrets of the occult.