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“I'm a city boy. I was born and raised in a fairly large city of three million people. One of the reasons I could remain for years on the run was that I love big cities, and feel completely confident and comfortable in them. The full range of a city boy's suspicion and dread of the country rose up in me when I held that glass of freshly squeezed milk. It was warm to the touch. It smelled of the cow. There seemed to be things floating in the glass. I hesitated. I had the sense that Louis Pasteur was standing just behind me, looking over my shoulder at the glass. I could hear him. Er, I would boil that milk first, Monsieur, if I were you... I swallowed prejudice, fear, and the milk all at once, gulping it down as quickly as possible. The taste was not as bad as I'd expected it to be—creamy and rich, and with a hint of dried grasses within the bovine, after-taste.”

ShantaramGregory David Roberts
Book:Shantaram
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“I don't know if they found that name in the heart of the man they believed me to be, or if they planted it there, like a wishing tree, to bloom and grow. Whatever the case, whether they discovered that peace or created it, the truth is that the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the chrismal rain. Shantaram. The better man that, slowly, and much too late, I began to be.”

ShantaramGregory David Roberts
Book:Shantaram
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“Let me put it another way. The agents of creation, the energy that actually animates the matter and the life that we think we see around us, cannot be measured or weighed or even put into time, as we know it. In one form, that energy is photons of light. The smallest object is a universe of open space to them, and the entire universe is but a speck of dust. What we call the world is just an idea—and not a very good one, yet. From the point of view of the light, the photon of light that animates it, the universe that we know is not real. Nothing is.”

ShantaramGregory David Roberts
Book:Shantaram
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“...and the hopeless mess of the place, and the people staring at you from the doorways of their hovels and...and you can't change anything. You can't do anything about it. You have to accept that things could be worse, and they'll never be much better, and you're completely helpless in the face of it." "It's good to know what's wrong with the world," Karla said, after a while. "But it's just as important to know that sometimes, no matter how wrong it is, you can't change it. A lot of the bad stuff in the world wasn't really that bad until someone tried to change it." "I'm not sure I want to believe that. I know you're right. I know we make things worse, sometimes, the more we try to make them better. But I want to believe that if we do it right, everything and everyone can change for the better.”

ShantaramGregory David Roberts
Book:Shantaram
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