ŷ������

“Every virtuous act has some Dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another. At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows. Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own. The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where none had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less. And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads. The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose. Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper”
― 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 still 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 there, in that shine within yourself, that new place for the 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, The Mountain Shadow

“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, Shantaram

“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabaker. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Heaped up on the blankets, our bodies bound by weariness and her deep slumber, surrounded by sickness and hope, death and defiance, I touched the soft surrendered curl of Karla's sleeping fingers to my lips, and I pledged my heart to her forever.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Я люблю тебя с той самой секунды, когда впервые увидел тебя. Мне кажется, я всегда любил тебя �� столько, сколько существует на свете любовь. Я люблю твой голос. Я люблю твое лицо. Я люблю твои руки. Я люблю все, что ты делаешь, и то, как ты это делаешь. Когда ты прикасаешься ко мне, мне кажется, что это волшебная палочка. Я люблю следить за тем, как ты думаешь, и слушать то, что ты говоришь. Я чувствую все это, но не понимаю и не могу объяснить �� ни тебе, ни себе. Я просто люблю тебя, люблю всем сердцем. Ты выполняешь миссию Бога: придаешь смысл моей жизни. И потому мне есть за что любить этот мир.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“It was the green that the sea would be, if the sea were perfect.”
― Gregory David Roberts

“Like most things, and most people, it's not as bad as it looks from the outside.”
― Gregory David Roberts

“Истина в том, что нет хороших или плохих людей. Добро и зло не в людях, а в их поступках. Люди остаются просто людьми, а с добром или злом их связывает только то, то они делают или отказываются делать. Истина в том, что в одном мгновении настоящей любви, в сердце любого человека �� и благороднейшего из всех, и самого пропащего �� заключена, как в чашечке лотоса, вся жизнь, весь её смысл, содержание и назначение. Истина в том, что все мы �� каждый из нас, каждый атом, каждая галактика и каждая частица материи во Вселенной �� движемся к Богу.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Любимый цвет: голубой с зеленью, цвет листьев на фоне неба. - Черт, и правда ведь, - признал я. А любимое время года? - Муссон, сезон дождей. - Любимый...- Голливудский фильм - "Касабланка", любимый болливудский фильм - "Узник любви", любимая еда - мороженое-джелато, любимая песня на хинди - "Этот мир и эти люди" из фильма "Разочарование", любимый мотоцикл...тот, на котором ты сейчас ездишь, да благословят его боги, любимые духи...- Твои, - вздохнул я, в отчаянии вскидывая руки. - Мои любимые духи - твои.”
― Gregory David Roberts, The Mountain Shadow

“I don't know. They look like monuments to something that died", she muttered to me as we followed him. "Something very unpopular.. like the human spirit, for example.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and loves that produce our courage.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Each breath was an angry little victory.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“There was hope and fearful excitement in the new.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“It seemed impossible that a modern airport, full of prosperous and purposeful travellers, was only kilometres away from those crushed and cindered dreams.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“I felt defiled by my own health and the money in my pockets. If you feel it at all, it's a lacerating guilt, that first confrontation with the wretched of the earth.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Then the smoulders of shame and guilt flamed into anger, became fist-tightening rage at the unfairness of it: What kind of a government, I thought, what kind of a system allows suffering like this?”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Children played everywhere. Men carried water in buckets. Men made repairs to one of the huts. And everywhere that I looked, people smiled and laughed.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Seeing him there, a man as alien to the place as I was, let me picture myself in that world. What had seemed unimaginably strange and remote from my experience suddenly became possible, and comprehensible, and, finally, fascinating.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“I looked at the people, then, and I saw how busy they were—how much industry and energy described their lives. Occasional sudden glimpses inside the huts revealed the astonishing cleanliness of that poverty: the spotless floors, and glistening metal pots in neat, tapering towers.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“voices rose up everywhere above ripples of unfamiliar music”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram