“The alchemist is two hundred years old,” the Englishman had told him. He must know how to deal with the snakes of the desert.
You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love. . . the love that speaks the Language of the World.
You don't even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.