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To make sure none followed where you led I used my hair to cover our tracks. Sun set on the island of our bed night rose eating echoes and we were beached there, in tangles of flicker, candles whispering at our driftwood backs. Your eyes above me afraid of the promises I might keep regretting the truth we did say less than the lie we didn't, I went in deep, I went in deep, to fight the past for you. Now we both know sorrows are the seeds o..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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One of the agonising truths for a battle medic is that you pray as hard and almost as often for men to die as you pray for them to live.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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You can only ever be yourself. The more you try to be like someone else, the more you find yourself standing in the way.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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But I was alone, and for two reasons: The mafia was theirs, not mine. For them, the organisation always came first. But I was loyal to the men, not the mafia; to the brothers, not the brotherhood. I worked for the mafia, but I didn't join it. I'm not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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f722d7b
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No matter how often or deeply I thought about the struggled past or the sorrow and promise of the present, I couldn't make that leap of confidence or trust or faith into the future. There was something missing: some calculation, some piece of evidence or parallax view of my life that would make it all clear to me, I was sure, but I didn't know what it was.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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Happiness is a myth, Karla once said. It was invented to make us buy things.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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Jealousy, like the flawed love that bears it, has no respect for time or space or wisely reasoned argument.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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2712571
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Suffering, let me see. I think that suffering is a matter of choice. I think that we do not have to suffer anything in this life, if we are strong enough to deny it. The strong man can master his feelings so completely that it is almost impossible to make him suffer. When we do suffer things, like pain and so, it means that we have lost control. So I will say that suffering is a human weakness. - Madjid
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Gregory David Roberts |
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The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the balm of suffering. -Farid
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Gregory David Roberts |
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SUNLIGHT SHATTERED ON THE WATER,
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Gregory David Roberts |
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She was a woman to admire and to desire, but the message in her eye and her bearing was unmistakable: offend or disesteem her at your peril.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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We can deny the past, but we can't escape its torment because the past is a speaking shadow that keeps pace with the truth of what we are, step for step, until we die.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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They couldn't understand that every time I entered the slum I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts. They couldn't understand what I meant when I talked about the purity of the slum: they'd been there, and seen the wretchedness and filth for themselves. They saw no purity. But they hadn't lived in those mira..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honour is concerned with how we do it. You can fight a war in an honourable way--the Geneva Convention exists for that very reason--and you can enforce the peace without any honour at all. In its essence, honour is the art of being humble.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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62238b2
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Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonisingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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9b3db27
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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 wanting ..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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a3c6104
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Is easy--suffering is hungry, isn't it? Hungry, for anything, means suffering. Not hungry for something, means, not suffering. But everybody knows that.' 'Yes, I guess everybody does. Good night, Prabu.' 'Goodnight, Lin.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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bf29c87
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Like many toilets in Goa, it was nothing more than a smooth, steep slope behind the squatting keyhole. Waste matter rolled down the slope to a narrow lane. Wild, hairy, black Goan pigs roamed the lanes, eating the waste.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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out at them, turning this way and that, his face cramped in an expression
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Gregory David Roberts |
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There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and evil. And until we have one, we will go on justifying our own actions, while condemning the actions of the others.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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In this life, we do what we can to improve ourselves.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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loves that produce our courage.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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I think I'd hoped to be released by it, and solaced, just by hearing her tell me. But it wasn't like that. I felt empty: the kind of emptiness that's sad but not distressed, pitying but not broken-hearted, and damaged, somehow, but clearer and cleaner for it. And then I knew what it was, that emptiness: there's a name for it, a word we use often, without realizing the universe of peace that's enfolded in it. The word is free.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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b7c6864
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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.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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At the moment, most of our ways of defining the unit of morality are similar in their intentions, but they differ in their details. So the priests of one nation bless their soldiers as they march to war, and the imams of another country bless their soldiers as they march out to meet them. And everybody who is involved in the killing, says that he has God on his side. There is no objective and universally acceptable definition of good and ev..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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3cb2882
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Happiness is a myth, It was invented to make us buy things
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Gregory David Roberts |
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with the words, but hearing them in
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Gregory David Roberts |
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I did know from experience that despair and humiliation haunt the poor.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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the ghetto existed on a foundation of those anonymous, unthankable deeds; insignificant and almost trivial in themselves, but collectively essential to the survival of the slum.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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But I was loyal to the men, not the mafia; to the brothers, not the brotherhood. I worked for the mafia, but I didn't join it. I'm not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it. And
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Gregory David Roberts |
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d9846ac
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Odinochestvo - eto drug, vsegda gotovyi sostavit' kompaniiu.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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fate has every power over us, but two. Fate cannot control our free will, and fate cannot lie.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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Riding a motorcycle is velocity as poetry. The fine balance between elegant agility and fatal fall is a kind of truth, and like all truth, it carries a heartbeat with it into the sky. Eternal moments in the saddle escape the stuttering flow of time, and space, and purpose. Coursing on those wheels, on that river of air, in that flight of freed spirit there's no attachment, no fear, no joy, no hatred, no love, and no malice: the nearest thi..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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What comes from the earth always returns. What flourishes, dies away to bloom again.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterises the human race. It's forgiveness that makes us what we are.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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To my eyes, the city was beautiful. It was wild and exciting. Buildings that were British Raj-romantic stood side to side with modern, mirrored business towers. The haphazard slouch of neglected tenements crumbled into lavish displays of market vegetables and silks. I heard music from every shop and passing taxi. The colours were vibrant. The fragrances were dizzyingly delicious. And there were more smiles in the eyes on those crowded stree..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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Fanaticism means that if you're not against me, you're against me.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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0c431c3
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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. Khader was one of my twelve, but his disguise was always the best. In those abandoned, angry days, as my grieving heart limped into numbing despair, I began to think of hi..
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Gregory David Roberts |
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b540b36
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Friendship is also a kind of medicine, and the markets for it, too, are sometimes black.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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Non so cosa mi spaventa di piu: il potere che ci schiaccia o la nostra infinita capacita di sopportarlo.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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acfc814
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Is easy--suffering is hungry, isn't it? Hungry, for anything, means suffering. Not hungry for something, means, not suffering. But everybody knows that.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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542b290
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The more slender your grip on reality, the more dangerous the world becomes. On the other hand, the more rational the world you find yourself in, the more carefully it must be questioned.
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Gregory David Roberts |
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But somehow, in some way, for some reason, the love had died in me, and I suddenly realised it, and was suddenly sure. It wasn't completely over, my feeling for Karla. It never is completely over. But there was nothing of the jealousy I once would've felt for the stranger Ranjit. There was no rage against him, and no feeling of hurt inspired by her. I felt numbed and empty sitting there, as if the war, and the loss of Khaderbhai and Khaled,..
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Gregory David Roberts |