from Maria's diary, on the day that she met the Swiss man

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 where I came from because I didn't
have the courage to say "yes" to life?

I made my first mistake when i was eleven years
old, when that boy asked me if I could lend him a pencil;
since then, I've realized that sometimes you get no
second chance and that it's best to accept the gifts the
world offers you. Of course it's risky, but is the risk
any greater than the chance of the bus that took forty-
eight hours to bring me here having an accident? If I
must be faithful to someone or something, then I
have, first of all, to be faithful to myself. If I'm looking
for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves
out of my system. The little experience of life I've had
has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything
is an illusion--and that applies to material as
well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something
they thought was theirs forever (as has happened
often enough to me already) finally comes to realize
that nothing really belongs to them.

And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point
wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine;
it's best to live as if today were the first (or last) day of
my life.

~ Eleven Minutes
by Paulo Coelho