|
d298f85
|
Time, too, will die, just as we do, when the universe dies, and is born again. Time's a living thing, just as we are, with birth, longevity, and extinction. Time has a heartbeat, but it isn't ours, no matter how much of ourselves we sacrifice to it. We don't need Time. Time needs us. Even Time loves company.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
5423668
|
There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor. -- Abdullah
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
575bfd4
|
I know how hard it is to find the line between helping someone out, and helping someone in. I know that all suffer and die inside, again and again, from the addiction of one. And I know that sometimes, if love doesn't harden itself, love doesn't survive at all.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
54cd6d5
|
Most of us pretend, with greater or lesser success, that the minute we live in is something we can share. But the past for every one of us is a desert island.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
ee4a4c1
|
Silences can wound as surely as the twisting lash.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
b5a4bed
|
Every human heartbeat, he's said many times, is a universe of possibilities.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
f305635
|
Love the truth that you find in the hearts of others. Always listen to the voice of love in your own heart
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
0bf90a5
|
The wonder isn't that love finds us, as strange and fated and mystical as that is. The wonder is that even when we never find it, even when love waits in the wings of dream too long, even when love doesn't knock on the door, or leave messages, or put flowers in our hands, so many of us never stop believing in love.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
72d68bf
|
Mumbai is the sweet, sweaty smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of Gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. Its the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the island city, and the blood metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and the waste of sixty million animals, more than half of t..
|
|
sleep
hate
human
hope
love
smell-sea
mumbai
shantaram
colour
empire
sweat
sweet
beautiful
city
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
372c7aa
|
I'd lost the mark on the psychic map that says 'You Are Here'.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
1577a1e
|
I would say that it is different for all of us, but that it happens when we grow up, when we mature and pass from the childishness of our youthful tears, and become adults. I think that it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering. I think that when we grow up, and learn that happiness is rare, and passes quickly, we become disillusioned and hurt. And how much we suffer is a mark of how much we have been hurt by this realis..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
36b66ea
|
The man grinned back at me with that perfect sincerity we fear and call simple-minded.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
90e828c
|
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 ..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
9cee85d
|
The ancient Sanskrit 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 wantin..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
41559cf
|
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. Add 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 y..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
c260330
|
A man must love his bear.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
0c4c8aa
|
love like water, searching for the sea. Love like Time, searching for meaning. Love like all that was, and ever will be.
|
|
romence
sea
water
ocean
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
60dffc9
|
And hope, that ancient seed, redeems the heart it feeds. The heartbeat of any conscious now is poised on the same choice that hope gives all of us, between shadows of the past, and the bright, blank page of any new day.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
e884be2
|
Fear and guilt are the dark angels that haunt rich men, Khader said to me once. I wasn't sure if that was true, or if he simply wanted it to be true, but I did know from experience that despair and humiliation haunt the poor.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
a7d909f
|
There's no meanness too spiteful or too cruel, Didier once said to me, when we hate someone for all the wrong reasons.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
883dbef
|
Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
809bdc9
|
Our decisions become narratives: fated choices that unknowably change the course of the living river. In the present, where decisions and connections are made, Fate waits on the riverbank of Story, leaving us to our mistakes and miracles, because it's our will alone that leads us to one or the other.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
cd8ff6f
|
I was sure there had to be a pay-off, somehow, and I kept waiting for it. I didn't know then, as I do now, that love's a one-way street. Love, like respect, isn't something you get; it's something you give.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
6f8e5bd
|
Now sadly there is attitude and no style.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
f321a22
|
You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
909eb4e
|
I want everything,' she replied with a faint, wry smile. 'You know, I said that once to a friend of mine, and he told me that the real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
a3d2438
|
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 won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabaker. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorro..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
d499bd4
|
The end mirrors the beginning. In the end, its about a woman & a city.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
00503cb
|
A mujaheddin fighter once told me that 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 |
|
c52690c
|
No-one, and nothing, could make me very happy. I was tough, which is probably the saddest thing you can say about a man.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
dc1216e
|
depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
6bb3ea1
|
The Source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's still burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, ..
|
|
stars
life
love
luminescence
mumbai
shantaram
night
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
018bc1f
|
Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
c49f0cc
|
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, ..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
cf7262f
|
Here, Lin,' he puffed. 'You are such a big fellow, I hope we can get a good fits. These are from Fat Satish. He is so fat, I think they might fit you. I told him a story, and then he gave it this two pairs for you. I told him that on the journey you had loose motions, and you made such a mess in your over-underpants that we had to throw them away.' 'You told him,' I asked, 'that I shit my pants?' 'Oh, yes, Lin. I certainly couldn't tell him..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
d13774f
|
Think. Act. Feel. Add 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 |
|
8bafd08
|
The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example was no less and no more than the amoount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary? That was the unspoken but implied, and unavoidable question everywhere in India.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
8e8190f
|
The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
41f6963
|
Religion is just a long competition to see who can design the silliest hat.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
55fa7d9
|
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 |
|
c175ef1
|
I sometimes think that the size of our happiness is inversely proportional to the size of our house.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
8849d24
|
I heard a warning, deep within - we usually do , when something worse than we can imagine is stalking us, and set to pounce. Fate's way of beating us in a fair fight is to give us warnings that we hear, but never heed.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
7e89ab9
|
MEN WAGE WARS for profit and principle, but they fight them for land and women. Sooner or later, the other causes and compelling reasons drown in blood and lose their meaning. Sooner or later, death and survival clog the senses. Sooner or later, surviving is the only logic, and dying is the only voice and vision. Then, when best friends die screaming, and good men maddened with pain and fury lose their minds in the bloody pit, when all the ..
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |
|
c2c3231
|
The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance, Didier once said, is that it works so well.
|
|
|
Gregory David Roberts |