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Gregory David Roberts

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Famous Gregory David Roberts Quotes

“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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“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.”

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Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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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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“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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“Some loves are like that. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, & your self-respect & independence. After a while you start throwing people out - friends, everyone you know. & it's still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, & you know it's going to take you down with it. I've seen that happen to a lot of people. I think that's why I'm sick of love. - Karla”

PeopleThinkingKnowsFeelsHeartStillsSelfEnoughHappensPrideSickIndependenceSelf RespectThrowingShantaramSinkingLifeboats
Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“There's a truth deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabhakar told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.”

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Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare form heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.”

KnowsShouldTryingHeartMayRealMomentsFeelingsHandsRememberFormHonestLateToo LateHeart To HeartReal Feelings
Book:Shantaram: A Novel
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“While I was chained to a wall and being tortured, I realized, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

KnowsMenMindStillsStoriesHateChoicesUniverseSoundPossibilityHe ManWallForgivingI RealizedChainsBitesBloodyShantaramHelplessnessOf My MindChoices You MakeChained
Author:Gregory David Roberts
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“That's how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another.”

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Book:Shantaram
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