The Alchemist

This book by Paulo Coelho never fails to amaze me.  I have not read it yet this year as I usually do because I have been lending it out to people constantly.  I was at a friend's house uninvited and my copy sat bookmarked in front of me.  Having already cleaned the place, I scooped it up and opened to the bookmark.

"

'An army is coming," the boy said.  'I had a vision.'

'The desert fills the hearts of man with visions," the camel driver answered.

But the boy told him about the hawks: that he had been watching their flight and had suddenly felt himself to have plunged into the Soul of the World.

The camel driver understood what the boy was saying.  He knew that any given thing on the face if the earth could reveal the history of all things.  One could open up a book to any page, look at a person's hand; one could turn a card or watch the flight of the birds ... whatever the thing observed, one could find a connection with his experience of the moment.  Actually, it wasn't that those things, in themselves, revealed anything at all; it was just that people, looking at what was occurring around them, could find a means of penetrating the Soul of the World.  

"

There is so much more I want to copy here, but I will restrain myself.  Read it again, dear reader.  It will surprise you every time with entire chapters you never remembered it to contain.