Some nice thougthts about love, desire and pain by Paulo Coelho

The most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage.
It wasn't necessary to know your own demons in order to find God.
Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not.
When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing.
They can stay together for hours, even days.
They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or - such is the pleasure they experience - they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.
Sex has come to be used as some kind of a drug: in order to escape reality, to forget about problems, to relax. And like all drugs, this is a harmful and destructive practice.
If you live your life intensely, you experience pleasure all the time and don't feel the need for sex.
When a teacher helps someone to discover something, the teacher always learns something new too.
The world enjoys suffering and pain. There's sadism in the way we look at these things, and masochism in our conclusion that we don't need to know all this in order to be happy, and yet we watch other people's tragedies and sometimes suffer along with them.
As I say, it's the human condition. Ever since we were expelled from paradise, we have either been suffering, making other people suffer or watching the suffering of others. It's beyond our control.
We are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes real possibility; and we die wanting to punish everyone else because we feel impotent, ill-used and unhappy.
Why was it that in God's holy world men were only interested in showing her pain.
Sacred pain, pain with pleasure, pain with explanations or without, but always pain, pain, pain...
...it's (pain) a very powerful drug. It's in our daily lives, in our hidden suffering, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams. Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it's seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self denial. Or cowardice. However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, or flirting with it and making it a part of our lives.
Pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that brings only joy: love. I need to love - that's all, I need to love. Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.
In all languages in the world, there's the same proverb: "What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't grieve over". Well, I say there isn't an ounce of truth in it. The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings we try to repress and forget. If we are in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots. If we're far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.