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be36f34
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When I was arrested,' I said, 'I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I've actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you've gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outs..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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8d8fac4
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I think it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering.
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suffering
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Gregory David Roberts |
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b17749c
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The trick in life is to want nothing. And then work our way towards achieving that.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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00b8cb7
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Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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0ce1b66
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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 passio..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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b6b0f09
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Tell people as much as they need to know, he said. I remember that he was smiling when he said it, like there was nothing to it. And ask people for help, he said. You'll be all right ... Don't worry ... It's a great adventure, your life, and it has only just begun ...
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Gregory David Roberts |
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5759865
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But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled. I
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Gregory David Roberts |
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63009eb
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I'd lost the mark on the psychic map that says You Are Here. Personality and personal identity are in some ways like co-ordinates on the street map drawn by our intersecting relationships. We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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83f27f5
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When you're sober and fit, it's the world that's fucked.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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4552f09
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Depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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d49fb43
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Wenn man einem Mann zeigt, wie nichtig seine Hoffnung und sein Hoffen war, totet man den hellen bejahenden Teil in ihm, der geliebt werden mochte.
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love
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Gregory David Roberts |
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c44c054
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Ein guter Mann ist so stark, wie er es fur die richtige Frau sein muss.
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strength
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Gregory David Roberts |
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bb6f724
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The popular European and American caricature of Afghans as wild, bloodthirsty men--a description that delighted Afghans themselves endlessly when they heard it--was contradicted by every direct contact I had with them. Face to face, Afghan men were generous, friendly, honest, and scrupulously courteous to me.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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32dfb28
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A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be
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Gregory David Roberts |
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8f99149
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if we envy someone for all the right reasons, we're half way to wisdom.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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c0dd3a9
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Evening brings the people to their windows, balconies, and doorways. Evening fills the streets with strolling crowds. Evening is an indigo tent for the circus of the city, and families bring children to the entertainments that inspire every corner and crossroad. 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. There's no time, in the day or night, w..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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e069545
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But I didn't know that then. I washed my hands in the cold, uncaring sea, and my conscience was as silent and remote as the mute, unreachable stars.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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a8ad81c
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I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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17288ae
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Good doctors have at least three things in common: they know how to observe, they know how to listen, and they're very tired.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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b5386ef
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I should've listened to her--she told me almost nothing, but she did give me clues, and I know now that she put signs in her words and expressions that were as clear as the constellations over our heads. But I didn't listen. It's a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but I didn't read them...
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Gregory David Roberts |
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9f65587
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we can only avoid chaos in the world of human affairs by having an agreed standard for the measure of a unit of morality.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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c95ba6c
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I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. 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 lov..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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bee0b2a
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Fate needs accomplices,
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Gregory David Roberts |
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caae85f
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credit, security passes, and other documents. It was a booming trade in the booming economy of Bombay, and we often worked through the dawn to satisfy the demand. And the business was generational: as licensing authorities and other bodies
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Gregory David Roberts |
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605aca9
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So, while fire and smoke singed the midnight sky, and bells and sirens railed about a kilometre away, we directed our men as they moved the heavy equipment into the new factory. And Krishna and Villu went to work almost at once.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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7ca899a
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The statement I do not hate you is a poem of passionate love.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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745809a
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I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare from heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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e3c93dc
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The contours of all our virtues are shaped by adversity.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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c309c56
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I looked at her for a while, reading the runes in her sky-blue eyes. Then I stood from the wall, held her in my arms, and kissed her. It was a long kiss. We lived out a life together in that kiss: we lived and loved and grew old together, and we died. Then our lips parted, and that life we might've had retreated, shrinking to a spark of light we would always recognise in one another's eyes.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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ed1bf79
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Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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7b98c43
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he'd been able to deal with that pain because he'd accepted his own part in causing it
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success-self-improvement
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Gregory David Roberts |
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dd82e52
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There's a dark feeling--less than hatred, but more than loathing--that ugly men feel for handsome men. It's unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it's always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy. It creeps out, into the light of your eyes, when you're falling in love with a beautiful woman.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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c660903
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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.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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05bd986
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There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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0474e43
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I hate it all,' I sighed, sure in my own mind that the new war would change nothing: that wars can't really change things. It's peace that makes the deepest cuts, I thought.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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3edb64b
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I let my eyes drift into the maze of leaves that only trees understand. Hatred has its gravitational web, locking stray specks of confusion into spirals of violence.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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a13d009
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Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of my life. Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don't despise.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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c975389
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the stones in destiny's walls are mortared with small and heedless complicities such as those.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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f8b0395
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the student is ready, the teacher appears--do
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Gregory David Roberts |
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f20fa8b
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I looked in the mirror once more. The new clothes felt like salt on the raw wounds, but they covered the worst of it, and I looked less alarming, less confronting, less hideous. I smiled at the mirror. I was practising, trying to remember what it was like to be me.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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2943304
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There was a horrible, blood-freezing scream somewhere very close. I suddenly recognised it as my own, but I couldn't stop it. And I looked at the men, the brave and beautiful men beside me, running into the guns, and God help me for thinking it, and God forgive me for saying it, but it was glorious, it was glorious, if glory is a magnificent and raptured exaltation. It was what love would be like, if love was a sin. It was what music would ..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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06f6449
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In the storm-lit darkness, the beaded sweat and raindrops on her arm were like so many glittering stars, and her skin was like a span of night sky.
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stars
sky
skin
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Gregory David Roberts |
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0e34efb
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Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey.
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prayer
prey
prison
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Gregory David Roberts |
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1239118
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Fate needs accomplices, and the stones in destiny's walls are mortared with small and heedless complicities such as those.
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Gregory David Roberts |