Gregory David Roberts Quotes

nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.
Gregory David Roberts
This is not India. There are people here from every part of India, but Bombay isn't India. Bombay is an own-world, a world in itself. The real India is out there.
Gregory David Roberts
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.
Gregory David Roberts
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.
Gregory David Roberts
For all his wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested and loyalty. But there is not test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.
Gregory David Roberts
The source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven's stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake's till burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you're done, and you can't go on. But it's not true. It's never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you're lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn't know how to quit, because it doesn't know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It's not what it was. It's always different. It's always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay in there, in that shine within yourself, that new place of light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you'll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.
Gregory David Roberts
A strong man can make his own luck.
Gregory David Roberts
But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears.
Gregory David Roberts
Love survives in us precisely because it isn't wise.
Gregory David Roberts
It's such a huge arrogance to love someone, and there's too much of it around. There's too much love in this world. Sometimes I think that's what heavens is-- a place where everybody's happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.
Gregory David Roberts
What is it?" she asked. "I'm looking for your wings. You are my guardian angel, aren't you?" "I'm afraid not," she replied, her cheeks dimplingwith a wry smile. "There's too much of the devil in me for that." "Just how much devil," I grinned, "are we talking about here?
Gregory David Roberts
It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts.
Gregory David Roberts
Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from, the more you wish they'd never happened.
Gregory David Roberts
In the storm-lit darkness, the beaded sweat and raindrops on her arm were like so many glittering stars, and her skin was like a span of night sky.
Gregory David Roberts
And I'd learned, the hard way, that sometimes, even with the purest intentions, we make things worse when we do our best to make things better.
Gregory David Roberts
justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.
Gregory David Roberts
Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them
Gregory David Roberts
Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wish they’d never happened.
Gregory David Roberts
...he'd been able to deal with that pain because he'd accepted his own part in causing it
Gregory David Roberts
Gimme an honest frown over a false smile, any day.
Gregory David Roberts
And if you did this, if you saved your mother from this vicious killer, would you be doing the wrong thing or the right thing?""The right thing," I said just as swiftly."No, Lin, I'm afraid not," he frowned. "We have just seen that in the terms of this new, objective definition of good and evil, killing is always wrong because, if everyone did it, we would not move toward God, the ultimate complexity, with the rest of the universe. So it is wrong to kill. But your reasons were good. So therefore, the truth of this decision is that you did the wrong thing, for the right reasons ...
Gregory David Roberts
Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey. Every time we turn the key we twist the knife of fate, because every time we cage a man we close him in with hate.
Gregory David Roberts
Fanaticism is the opposite of love. A wise man once told me - he's a Muslim, by the way - that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion.
Gregory David Roberts
I looked at the people, then, and I saw how busy they were - how much industry and energy described their lives.
Gregory David Roberts
There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you’re determined to dislike for no good reason.
Gregory David Roberts
I think it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering.
Gregory David Roberts
I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss.
Gregory David Roberts
We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.
Gregory David Roberts
Prisons are the temples where devils learn to prey.
Gregory David Roberts
If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you just don't get the joke.
Gregory David Roberts
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.
Gregory David Roberts
Powerful people have no regrets.
Gregory David Roberts
The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding indefatigable and distant past that had crashed intact through barriers of time into its own future. I liked it.
Gregory David Roberts
The clue to everything a man should love and fear in her was there right from the start in the ironic smile that primed and swelled the archery of her full lips. There was pride in that smile and confidence in the set of her fine nose. Without understanding why I knew beyond question that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance and confuse her confidence with impassivity. I didn't make that mistake. My eyes were lost swimming floating free in the shimmering lagoon of her steady even stare. Her eyes were large and spectacularly green. It was the green that trees are in vivid dreams. It was the green that the sea would be if the sea were perfect.
Gregory David Roberts
A politician is someone who promises a bridge even when there's no water
Gregory David Roberts
Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of my life.Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don't despise.
Gregory David Roberts
A man trusts another man when he sees enough of himself in him.
Gregory David Roberts
I love you, Karla,” I said when we were alone again. “I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I’ve loved you for as long as there’s been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your hands. I love everything you do, and I love the way you do everything. It feels like magic when you touch me. I love the way your mind works, and the things you say. And even though it’s all true, all that, I don’t really understand it, and I can’t explain it – to you or to myself. I just love you. I just love you with all my heart. You do what God should do: you give me a reason to live. You give me a reason to love the world.
Gregory David Roberts
A wise man once told me- he’s a muslim by the way- that he has more in common with a jew than he does a fanatic of his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or a Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a ration, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion
Gregory David Roberts
Человек, который никуда не спешит, никуда не попадает.
Gregory David Roberts
Приятелството е и вид лекарство и пазарите за него понякога също са черни.
Gregory David Roberts
Понякога трябва да се предадеш, за да победиш.
Gregory David Roberts
Ако съдбата не те разсмива, ти просто не схващаш шегата.
Gregory David Roberts
Фанатиците винаги имат един такъв раздърпан, опулен вид. Приличат на хора, които не мастурбират, но непрекъснато мислят за това.
Gregory David Roberts
...един добър мъж е толкова силен, колкото е нужно на подходящата за него жена.
Gregory David Roberts
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.
Gregory David Roberts
I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.
Gregory David Roberts
Первое, на что я обратил внимание в тот первый день в Бомбее, – непривычный запах. Я почувствовал его уже в переходе от самолета к зданию аэровокзала – прежде, чем услышал или увидел что-либо в Индии. Этот запах был приятен и будоражил меня, в ту первую минуту в Бомбее, когда я, вырвавшись на свободу, заново вступал в большой мир, но он был мне абсолютно незнаком. Теперь я знаю, что это сладкий, тревожный запах надежды, уничтожающей ненависть, и в то же время кислый, затхлый запах жадности, уничтожающей любовь. Это запах богов и демонов, распадающихся и возрожденных империй и цивилизаций. Это голубой запах морской кожи, ощутимый в любой точке города на семи островах, и кроваво-металлический запах машин. Это запах суеты и покоя, всей жизнедеятельности шестидесяти миллионов животных, больше половины которых – человеческие существа и крысы. Это запах любви и разбитых сердец, борьбы за выживание и жестоких поражений, выковывающих нашу храбрость. Это запах десяти тысяч ресторанов, пяти тысяч храмов, усыпальниц, церквей и мечетей, а также сотен базаров, где торгуют исключительно духами, пряностями, благовониями и свежими цветами. Карла назвала его однажды худшим из самых прекрасных ароматов, и она была, несомненно, права, как она всегда бывает по-своему права в своих оценках. И теперь, когда бы я ни приехал в Бомбей, прежде всего я ощущаю этот запах – он приветствует меня и говорит, что я вернулся домой.
Gregory David Roberts
Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.
Gregory David Roberts
Sometimes you break your heart in the right way, if you know what I mean.
Gregory David Roberts
A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.
Gregory David Roberts
There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get - who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.
Gregory David Roberts
Whatever you do, in the privacy of your own rain shower, is your own business
Gregory David Roberts
Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn
Gregory David Roberts
If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.
Gregory David Roberts
One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.
Gregory David Roberts
She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would’ve done anything for him. Some people are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence. After a while you start throwing people out—your friends, everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take you down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people here. I think that’s why I’m sick of love.
Gregory David Roberts
Some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. Some things are so sad that only your soul can do the crying for them.
Gregory David Roberts