Quotes from Gregory David Roberts

But already, like the people in the ghetto, hundreds of feet below, I was picking through the smashed houses in my heart, and rebuilding on the ruin.

Some women cry easily. The tears fall as gently as fragrant raindrops in a sun-shower, and leave the face clear and clean and almost radiant. Other women cry hard, and all the loveliness in them collapses in the agony of it.

I was an actor once, I muttered, in another life.

She saw me, and smiled. Those things inside, when the woman you love smiles at you: those spears of courage, that rain.

There's a theory that snoring at night in sleep is a subconscious defence reflex—a warning sound that frightened potential predators away from the mouth of the cave when our lower-Palaeolithic ancestors huddled in vulnerable sleep.

So, that's it,' he concluded. 'The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid men, and a hundred million cowards. The rest of us, all six billion of us, do pretty much what we are told.

No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed. Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves.

Outside on the street early evening glowed on every face, as if the whole world was blushing to think what the night would bring.

Seeing him there, a man as alien to the place as I was, let me picture myself in that world. What had seemed unimaginably strange and remote from my experience suddenly became possible, and comprehensible, and, finally, fascinating.

What comes from the earth always returns. What flourishes, dies away to bloom again.

They're (kids) so... innocent. Except that they're not. They know exactly what they want, and they don't stop till they get it.

I looked at the people, then, and I saw how busy they were—how much industry and energy described their lives. Occasional sudden glimpses inside the huts revealed the astonishing cleanliness of that poverty: the spotless floors, and glistening metal pots in neat, tapering towers.

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.

There are only three big questions?' I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice. 'Yes,' he answered equably. 'Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Those are the three big questions. And if you love him, Lin, my young friend, if you love him, he will tell you these secrets, as well.

The first rule of black business everywhere is: never let anyone know what you're thinking. Didier's corollary to the rule was: always know what the other thinks of you.

voices rose up everywhere above ripples of unfamiliar music

other people stared mute witness, just as we did.

Compassion's a very strange thing. It comes from deep inside. People know it when they see it, because you can't fake it. I know. I've tried. I was terrible at it. I got sick, when I tried. I had to go back to being a genuine, uncaring cunt, just to get well again. It's genuine, see, even being an uncaring cunt, and I'm drawn to genuine things, even if I don't like them.

There is no such thing as a trivial choice. That is why so many powerful people try to influence all our choices

And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.

The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business. But

Feynman once said that if you understand quantum theory, you don't. I had no idea what Lisa was talking about.

I didn't know it then, but it was one of the best decisions of my life.

If the fate doesn't make you laugh, then you just don't get the joke.