Paulo Coelho

I had thoroughly enjoyed reading Paulo Coelho's Alchemist long time back.
With the same expectation I read his other books- The Witch of Portobello and Eleven Minutes and it didn't impress me much.
Though the stories start nicely but they fail to hold the attention till the end.
Here and there his philosophy about life and dreams is good. But at the same time, his explanation about some ritualistic practices is hard to understand.

Here are some excerpts from his books which I liked:
From Eleven Minutes- "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 realise our dreams".

From The Witch of Portobellowriting about 'Ants' he says "The guards are genetically prepared to to sacrifice themselves for the queen, the workers carry leaves 10 times their own weight, the engineers make tunnels that can resist storms and floods. They enter into mortal combat with their enemies, they suffer for the community and they never ask 'Why are we doing this?'".