Quotes from Gregory David Roberts

The work had fallen to me, it seemed, because I knew a little more than the next man, and I was willing to do it.

you always seemed so relaxed and at home. It's like you've always been here.

Winston Churchill, who once defined a fanatic as someone who won't change his mind and can't change the subject.

It's the right place for me, if you understand what I mean, and I knew that on the first day, in the first hour that I came here. So, in a sense, I was comfortable from the beginning.

With my pale eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses, I stared through the window and tried to lose myself in the spectacular view.

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.

L'unico momento in cui smetteva di odiarsi era quando il rischio era talmente grande da costringerlo ad agire senza pensare e senza provare nessuna emozione.

Sometimes, the bravest thing we ever do is the thing we never get to do. And sometimes the spark that ignites a brother's love, in men not born brothers, is nothing more than a pure intention.

At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows.

We should've built a life from the stars and the sea and the sand. And 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.

He was taken to hospital. I never saw him again, and he never opened his mouth.

I told him,' she said, 'that a good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.

My greed had weakened me. Greed is human Kryptonite

a man has to draw the line somewhere. Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.

and in minutes we were in blackness again, with nothing but faith and fear and the will to survive.

THE WORLD IS RUN by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards,' Abdul Ghani pronounced in his best Oxford English accent, licking the sweet honey cake from his short, thick fingers. 'The evil men are the power—the rich men, and the politicians, and the fanatics of religion—whose decisions rule the world

When we act, even with the best of intentions, when we interfere with the world, we always risk a new disaster that mightn't be of our making, but that wouldn't occur without our action.

I love their music, Lin, more than anything I have ever heard, from any culture. But in the heart of my love for it, I have to say that I am afraid. Every time I hear them—and I play them every day, when I am at home here—I have the feeling that I am hearing the sound of my own requiem.

Without a good woman, a man like you - men like you and me - we're just asking for trouble, yaar.

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.

I could never respect a man who didn't have the good sense to be at least a little bit afraid of me.

There was too much that I didn't understand. There was too much that I wouldn't allow myself to ask. And I was excited, in that web of connections and concealments. The scent of danger, the smell of fear, filled my senses.

Gli atti più perfidi dei nostri simili colpiscono sempre la parte di noi che desidera amare il mondo. E quando subiamo una violazione, una piccola parte della vergogna che proviamo è quella di appartenere alla razza umana.

Sometimes it is necessary to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong—that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that what we do is right?