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Gregory David Roberts

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Famous Gregory David Roberts Quotes

“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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“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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“Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. 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 the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets.”

IfsMenHeartCountryBodyEyeGirlWalksPoetMusic IsMen And WomenVicesCornersSingersEvery ManIndianDancerShopsPrincessAsiaPeasantsShantaramVice Versa
Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover's hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should've done it. I know now that she would've laughed, if I'd done it, and she would've liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might've been, and never would be, whirled around us.”

IfsKnowsWorldShouldHeartLongDoneHandsMightWould BeFeltFiveLoversMy HeartPromiseExcitingStrangerFamiliarStaringUrgesFlatsChestsSecondsLaughedParallelsIrresistibleParallel Lives
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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“I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we don't earn it, we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is - a way of earning the future.”

IfsThinkingWayImportantPastLove IsForeverDeserveEarningShantaramLive In The Present
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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