Eleven Minutes (2003) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

• Maria: Main Character. Young Brazilian girl who moves to Switzerland under promises of a better job and ends up prostituting herself. She is content with her life but due to her bad experiences with love has decided to give up on it. Until she meets Ralf
• Maria's father: A salesman
• Maria's mother: A seamsterss
• Maílson: Translator / security / agent in Rio de Janeiro, who was the interpreter when Maria met Roger.
• Vivian: A cold woman who knew better that the young girls would not get their dream (i.e. adventure, money, husband) while she worked for Roger. She introduced the name “Rue de Berne” to Maria, which is in the red-light district of Geneva.
• Heidi: The woman at the library from where Maria borrowed books
• Milan: The owner of the “Copacabana” bar, where Maria worked as a prostitute.
• Nyah: Prostitute from the Philippines, and Maria’s only female friend at the Copacabana.
• Ralf Hart: A successful 29 year old painter with whom Maria secretly falls in love. Ralf has been married twice, but got divorced in both cases because he lost interest in the sexual part of the relationship. He sees Maria as his opportunity to learn about sex once again.
• Terence: A wealthy Englishman who introduced Maria to the pleasures of sadomasochism.

Quotes edit see section history

• “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

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• 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.

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• really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

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•      That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

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•      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.

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•      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.

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•      Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

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• 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.

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•      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.

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•      The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon.

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• 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

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Copacabana
• Switzerland
• Paris

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

List the chapters of this book.

Series & Lists edit see section history

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.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Paulo Coelho (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Authors, A-Z › ( C ) › Coelho, Paulo
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

More Books Like This edit see section history