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Gregory David Roberts

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Famous Gregory David Roberts Quotes

“Mentre l'errore continua ad ardere, un amore in frantumi o una fede smarrita ci fanno credere che sia tutto finito, che non ce la facciamo più. Non è vero. Non è mai vero. Non importa quali siano le nostre azioni, non importa dove ci siamo persi, la luminescenza non svanisce mai. [...] A volte la foresta che ricresce nel cuore segnato da una cicatrice è persino più folta e selvaggia di quanto fosse prima dell'incendio. E se restiamo in quel bagliore nascosto, nel nuovo ricettacolo di luce - perdonando tutti, senza mai arrenderci - prima o poi ci ritroviamo là dove amore e bellezza hanno creato il mondo: all'inizio. L'inizio.”

Ispirazione Motivazione Vita
Book:L'Ombre de la montagne (Littérature étrangère)
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“The Indians are the Italians of Asia", Didier pronounced with a sage and mischievous grin. "It can be said, certainly, with equal justice, that the Italians are the Indians of Europe, but you do understand me, I think. There is so much Italian in the Indians, and so much Indians in the Italians. They are both people of the Madonna - they demand a goddess, even if the religion does not provide one. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is music inside the body, and music is food inside the heart. The Language of India and the language of Italy, they make every man a poet, and make something beautiful from every banalite. They are nations where love - amore, pyaar - makes a cavalier of a Borsalino on a street corner, and makes a princess of a peasant girl, if only for the second that her eyes meet yours.”

LoveIndiansItaliansPyaar
Book:Shantaram
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“Mumbai is the sweet, sweaty smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of Gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. Its the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the island city, and the blood metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and the waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and love that produces courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches and mosques, and of hunderd bazaar devoted exclusively to perfume, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. That smell, above all things - is that what welcomes me and tells me that I have come home. Then there were people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konark; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindi, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsee, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incoparable beauty, India.”

LoveBeautifulHateHopeSleepSweetHumanAwakeColourSweatCityShantaramEmpireMumbaiSmell Sea
Book:Shantaram
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“The tears, when they come to some men, are worse than beatings. They're wounded worse by sobbing, men like that, than they are by boots and batons. Tears begin in the heart, but some of us deny the heart so often, and for so long, that when it speaks we hear not one but a hundred sorrows in the heartbreak. We know that crying is a good and natural thing. We know that crying isn't a weakness, but a kind of strength. Still, the weeping rips us root by tangled root from the earth, and we crash like fallen trees when we cry.”

KnowsMenHeartKindLongStillsEarthSpeakNaturalTreeCryTearsSorrowWeaknessHundredRootsDenyFallenBootsCrashWoundedRipWeepingShantaramTangledNatural ThingsSobbingBatonFallen Trees
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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“Let me explain something to you. Look around here. How many people do you count? Sixty, eighty, eighty people? Greeks, Germans, Italians, French, Americans. Tourists from everywhere. Eating, drinking, talking, laughing. And from Bombay - Indians and Iranians and Afghans and Arabs and Africans. But how many of these people have real power, real destiny, real dynamic for their place, and their time, and the lives of thousand of people? I will tell you - four. Four people in this room with power, and the rest are like the rest of the people everywhere: powerless, sleepers in the dream.”

PeopleLooksRealDreamRoomsTalkingDestinyLaughingFourThousandEatingLet MeDrinkingGreekSixtyPowerlessEightyTouristsReal PowerSleepersBombay
Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“Do you know the story of the scorpion and the frog? You know, the frog agrees to carry the scorpion across the river, because the scorpion promises not to sting him. And then the scorpion stings the frog, half way across the river. The drowning frog asks him why he did it, when they'll both drown, and the scorpion says that he's a scorpion, and it's his nature to sting.”

KnowsWayStoriesAsksHalfPromiseRiversAgreeDo You KnowDrowningShantaramFrogsHalf WayScorpions
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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“The only victory that really counts in prison is survival. But survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term; the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it. And it's for those small victories of the heart, and the spirit, and the will that we sometimes risk the body that cradles them.”

IfsMenWellsHeartMeanSaidEndsSometimesBodySpiritTermWalksAliveRiskHe ManBrokenVictorySurvivalPrisonSentencesDestroyedGatesJailSurvivedCradleSmall Victories
Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“There is nothing so depressing as good advice, and I will be pleased if you do not inflict it upon me. Frankly, I am shocked at you. You must know this, surely? Some years ago I suffered such an offensively gratuitous piece of good advice that I was depressed for six months afterward. It was a very close call - I almost never recovered.”

IfsKnowsYearsPiecesAdviceMonthsSixYears AgoDepressingShockedSix MonthsGood AdviceClose Calls
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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“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-paleolithic ancestors huddled in vulnerable sleep. That group of nomads, cameleers, sheep and goat herders, farmers, and guerilla fighters lent credibility to the idea, for they snored so thunderously and with such persistent ferocity through the long, cold night that they would've frightened a pride of ravenous lions into scattering like startled mice.”

LongIdeasNightSoundSleepGroupsTheoryPrideColdMouthsVulnerableFighterFrightenedLionsFarmersWarningAncestorSheepSubconsciousMiceCavesPersistentCredibilityDefenceGoatsPredatorReflexesNomadFerocitySnoringCold Night
Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“While the foods were being prepared, I watched as men dragged a foot-operated grinding wheel into an open space, and the groom devoted a tense hour to putting a razor's edge to a large, ornate dagger. The bride's father watched that effort with a critical eye. After satisfying himself that the weapon was suitably lethal, he gravely accepted it as a gift from the younger man. The groom has just sharpened the knife that the bride's father will use on him, if he ever mistreats the girl.”

IfsMenUseEyeGirlFatherHoursSpaceEffortFeetWeaponsPreparedEdgesCriticalAcceptedWheelsSatisfyingKnivesDevotedTenseBridesRazorsDaggersOpen SpacesMistreat
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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“It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”

WayArtDreamWould BeLove IsPromiseArt IsForgivingSpeciesEndlessWorks Of ArtShantaramRetributionNo LoveActs Of Love
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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