quotes by Gregory David Roberts

"Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Food is music to the body, music is food to the heart."
— Gregory David Roberts

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke."
— Gregory David Roberts

"Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it's the other way around"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting"
— Gregory David Roberts

"There are no mistakes. Only new paths to explore."
— Gregory David Roberts

"It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would’ve done anything for him. Some people are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence. After a while you start throwing people out—your friends, everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take you down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people here. I think that’s why I’m sick of love."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities."
— Gregory David Roberts

"Sometimes you have to lose to win"
— Gregory David Roberts

"The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly, and with the eyes open."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

""A man has to find a good woman, and when he finds her he has to win her love. then he has to earn her respect. then he has to cherish her trust. and then he has to, like, go on doing that for as long as they live. Until they both die. That's what it's all about. That's the most important thing in the world. That's what a man is, Yaar. A man is truly a man when he wins the love of a good woman, earns her respect, and keeps her trust. Until you do that, you're not a man.""
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Fate gives us 3 teachers, 3 friends, 3 enemies and 3 great loves in our life. But these 12 are always disguised and we can never know which is which until we've loved them, left them or fought them."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Heroes only come in three kinds:dead, damaged or dubious."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"You know the difference between news and gossip, don't you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"7) They’d lied to me and betrayed me, leaving jagged edges where all my trust had been, and I didn’t like or respect or admire them any more, but still I loved them. I had no choice. I understood that, perfectly, standing in the white wilderness of snow. You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it’s a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die.
"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that's all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that's all we have — to hold on tight until the dawn."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Whatever you do, in the privacy of your own rain shower, is your own business"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"La sencilla y sorprendente verdad sobre la India y sobre su gente es que cuando vas a su país y tratas con ellos, el corazón siempre te guía más sabiamente que la cabeza. No hay lugar en el mundo donde eso sea más cierto."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

""...hate has no literature: real fear and real hate have no words""
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke"
— Gregory David Roberts

"every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Men reveal what they think when they look away and what they feel when they hesitate. With women it's the other way around"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"I went to war. .... I survived, while other men around me died. ... men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Friendship is an Algebra test that nobody passes."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"If you make your heart into a weapon, you end up using it on yourself."
— Gregory David Roberts

"Cowardece is often just another name for being taken by surprise."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to be in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"the past reflects eternally between two mirrors-the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"but there's no nation uncorrupted. there's no system that's immune to the misuse of money."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"when you judge the power that is in a person, you must judge their capacities as both friend and as enemy."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"at first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"and evening is a chaperone for young lovers: the last hour of light before the night comes to steal the innocence from their slow promenades"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"the ancient sanskirt legends speak of a destined love, a karmic connection between souls that are fated to meet and collide and enrapture one another. the legends say that the loved one is instantly recognised because she's loved in every gesture, every expression of thought, every movement, every sound, and every mood that prays in her eyes. the legends say that we know her by her wings - the wings that only we can see - and because wanting her kills every other desire of love. the same legends also carry warnings that such fated love may, sometimes, be the possession and the obsession of one, and only one, of the two souls twinned by destiny. but wisdom, in one sense, is the opposite of love. love survives in us precisely because it isn't wise."
— Gregory David Roberts

"“There’s too much love in the world. Sometimes I think that’s what heaven is---- a place where everybody’s happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.”"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"'The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.'"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"it took me a long time and most of the world to learn what i know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while i was chained to a wall and being tortured."
— Gregory David Roberts

"Sooner or later, fate puts us together with all the people, one by one, who show us what we could, and shouldn’t, let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard, the waster, the betrayer, the ruthless mind, and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice, of course, because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people. And it’s impossible to despise someone you honestly pity, and to shun someone you truly love. "
— Gregory David Roberts

"Ask people for help. You’ll be all right. Don’t worry. It’s a great adventure, your life, and it has only just begun…"
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them... when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

"For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. And our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on."
— Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)