“As he stood there, the audience was forgotten. The past, with all its mistakes and suffering, its doubt and sin,came before him for an instant, then vanished, and his heart leaped for joy, because he knew that it was goneforever. And the future, made beautiful by the presence of Christ and the conviction that he was right withGod, stretched away as a path leading ever upward, until it was lost in the glories of the life to come, while heheard, as in a dream, the words of his confessed Master, “Follow: thou me.”

“It seemed to Abby that the peacock was strutting, showing off his feathers to an invisible audience in the night. It didn't look like he was worried about the peahen. He looked selfish and self-absorbed, like he knew he was beautiful. Abby watched his feathers blow in the wind, and she watched as the peahens followed with all of their strength. They followed because it was all they had ever down; they followed because it was all they knew how to do.”

“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue following their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist.“Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer."From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that, every time he heard the alarm, he would heed its message.”

“He knew that when he'd let Cheyenne lead him away, he'd lost his chance to find out the name of the girl who, without a single word spoken to him, had stolen his heart.”

“She was all the dreams he'd lost at dawn-- dreams of everything he hadn't understood he needed until now. She was his playmate, his confidante, the lover who made his blood rush. She was the mother of his children and the companion of his old age. She was the joy of his heart.”

“And for the first time in his life, he smiled thinking about the always-coming infinite future stretching out before him.”