Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

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Description

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured." So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary... read more

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Memorable Quotes

“Happiness is a myth, it was invented to make us buy things.”
Karla
“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in 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.”
Shantaram
“Every day, when you're on the run, is the whole of your life. Every free minute is a short story with a happy ending.”
Shantaram
“Love survives in us precisely because it is not wise.”
Shantaram
“Craziness is the basis of many a fine relationships. In fact, craziness is the basis of every fine relationship!”
Didier
“The dishonest bribe is the same in every country, but the honest bribe is India's alone.”
Didier
“I am French. I am gay, I am Jewish, and I am a criminal, more or less in that order. Bombay is the only city I have ever found that allows me to be all four of those things, at the same time.”
Didier
“I hate it when people take so long to drink a single glass. It is like putting on a condom to masturbate.”
Didier
“Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes.”
Karla
“Prison wasn't hell, but there was no heaven it it, either. It its own way, that was just as bad.”
Shantaram
“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.”
Karla
“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.”
Didier
“There's a dark feeling - less than hatred, but more than loathing that ugly men feel for handsome men. It's unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it's always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy. It creeps out, into the light of your eyes, when you're falling in love with a beautiful woman.”
Shantaram
“It's impossible to be really sad when you're asleep. You can be happy and afraid and angry in your dreams, but you have to be wide awake to be sad, don't you think?”
Ulla
“No man is as cool as he looks.”
Karla
“Every city in the world has a village in its heart. You will never understand the city unless you first understand the village.”
Didier
“There is no such thing as forever. I don't know why we use the word.”
Karla
“I want everything. You know, I said that once, to a friend of mine, and told me that the real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.”
Karla
“Sometimes, in India, you have to surrender before you win.”
Karla
“There's a kind of luck that's not much more than being in the right place at the right time, a kind of inspiration that's not much more than doing the right thing in the right way, and both only really happen to you when you empty your heart of ambition, purpose, and plan; when you give yourself, completely, to the golden, fate-filled moment.”
Shantaram
“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.”
Shantaram
“When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.”
Didier
“It's a fact of life on run that you often love more people than you trust.”
Shantaram

First Sentence

IT TOOK ME a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.

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