Reader-256's notes on The Alchemist

People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it’s better to be with the sheep, who don’t say anything. And better still with one’s book. They tell their incredible stories at the time you want to hear them. But when you are talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don’t know how you continue the conversation.

In one of the books he learned that the most important text in the literature of alchemy contained only a few lines, and had been inscribed on the surface of an emerald. … Well, then, why do we need all these books? The boy asked. So that we can understand those few lines, the Englishman answered.