Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . .... read more
Maria wants to become rich. A man in Brazil dupes her and makes her come to Switzerland and makes her work as a samba dancer. She escapes, goes to a night club and starts working as a prostitute. She falls in love with a "special client".
“At every moment of our lives we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.”
“While she was waiting for her Prince Charming to appear, all she could do was dream.”
“The power of beauty: what must the world be like for ugly women?”
“If I'm looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre love out of my systems.”
“It is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love.”
“I've met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I'm not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months' time, I'll be far away and he'll be just a memory, but I couldn't stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit.”Maria
“The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; its taking chances, falling over and getting up again; its mountaineering; its wanting to get to the very top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don't manage it.”Maria
“A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”Maria
Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.Highlighted by 173 Kindle customers
really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.Highlighted by 162 Kindle customers
That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.Highlighted by 159 Kindle customers
I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.Highlighted by 126 Kindle customers
All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.Highlighted by 119 Kindle customers
Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.Highlighted by 113 Kindle customers
dreaming is very pleasant as long as you are not forced to put your dreams into practice. That way, we avoid all the risks, frustrations and difficulties, and when we are old, we can always blame other people—preferably our parents, our spouses or our children—for our failure to realize our dreams.Highlighted by 104 Kindle customers
Everything is important. If you live your life intensely, you experience pleasure all the time and don’t feel the need for sex. When you have sex, it’s out of a sense of abundance, because the glass of wine is so full that it overflows naturally, because it is inevitable, because you are responding to the call of life, because at that moment, and only at that moment, you have allowed yourself to lose control.Highlighted by 101 Kindle customers
The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon.Highlighted by 79 Kindle customers
Certain things cannot be shared. Nor can we be afraid of the oceans into which we plunge of our own free will; fear cramps everyone’s style. Man goes through hell in order to understand this. Love one another, but let’s not try to possess one another.Highlighted by 75 Kindle customers
Preceded by Dracula, and followed by Angela's Ashes.
Preceded by The Last Straw, and followed by The Shining.
Preceded by The Joy Luck Club, and followed by Thirteen Reasons Why.
Preceded by Speak, and followed by She's Come Undone.
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