Paulo Coelho was born on 24 August 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and attended a Jesuit school. At age 17, Coelho's parents committed him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20. Coelho later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me.
