Quotes from Gregory David Roberts

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.

They make a religion of being greedy.

Manchmal lieben wir nur mit der Hoffnung. Manchmal weinen wir mit allem ausser Tränen. Und am Ende bleiben nur: Liebe und ihre Pflicht, Trauer und ihre Wahrheit. Am Ende haben wir nichts anderes - nichts anderes, woran wir uns festhalten können, bis der Morgen dämmert.

If the hour comes, and there's no-one to beg or blame but yourself, you learn that what we have in the end is just a handful more than what was born in us. That unique handful, what we add to what we are, is the only story of us that isn't told by someone else.

Karla says that depression only happens to people who don't know how to be sad.' 'Well she is wrong!' he declared...'There are many animals that can express their happiness, but only the human animal has the genius to express a magnificent sadness. And for me it is something special; a daily meditation. Sadness is my one and my only art.' - Didier

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!

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.

I couldn't tell him that I felt too weak and beat up to climb a mountain: sometimes, all the guts you have is the guts you pretend, because you love someone too much to lose their respect.

Tomorrow,' she said, 'when you go to Prabaker's village, try to relax completely, and go with the experience. Just … let yourself go. Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win.

A business suit, Didier once said to me, is nothing but a military uniform, stripped of its honour. And

The word family is derived from the word famulus, meaning a servant, and in its early usage, familia, it literally meant the servants of a household. In its essence, the longing for family, and the ravenousness that the loss of family creates in us, isn't just for belonging: it's for the grace that abides in serving those we love.

Then there were the people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konarak; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Parsee, Jain, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incomparable beauty, India.

Love unlived is a sin against life, and mourning is one of the ways we love. I felt it then, and I let it happen, the longing for him to return. The power in his eyes, and the pride when I did something he admired, and the love in his laugh. The longing: the longing for the lost.

Heaped up on the blankets, our bodies bound by weariness and her deep slumber, surrounded by sickness and hope, death and defiance, I touched the soft surrendered curl of Karla's sleeping fingers to my lips, and I pledged my heart to her forever.

So it begins, this story, like everything else—with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.

Anything that inhibits, impedes, or prevents this movement toward the Ultimate Complexity is evil. The wonderful thing about this definition of good and evil is that it is both objective and universally acceptable.

because justice is a judgement that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. 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.' I knew those words by heart. I

Good is only half the truth, and truth is only half the story.

The moon, our lonely sister, filters pain and harm from sunlight, and reflects it back to us safely, free of burn and blemish. We danced in moonlight on the balcony that night, Oleg and I, and we sang and shouted and laughed, hardening ourselves to what we'd done in life, and what we'd lost. And the moon graced two fallen fools, on a fallen day, with sunlight purified by a mirror in the sky, made of stone.

Some people always manage to make us feel sorry for them, no matter how stupid and angry we feel about it after.

An amateur is anyone who hasn't learned how not to do it,' I said.

They are often brave, I'm sure, but they are stupid, too, because they give their lives for governments and causes that use their flesh and blood as mere chess pieces. Those governments always betray them or let them down in the long run. Nations neglect no men more shamefully than the heroes of their wars.

His simple, unbeautiful words were the clearest expression of what all prisoners, and everyone else who lives long enough, know well—that suffering, of every kind, is always a matter of what we've lost. When we're young, we think that suffering is something that's done to us. When we get older—when the steel door slams shut, in one way or another—we know that real suffering is measured by what's taken away from us.

But I couldn't respond. My culture had taught me all the wrong things well. So I lay completely still, and gave no reaction at all. 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.