Shantaram - The BIG book of Quotes!

It's high time I listed some favorite quotes from Shantaram. It was simply awesome. And an injustice to the book if I would not quote some really awesome ones.

When I started reading the book, I was not aware that it was not an ordinary book with an extraordinary story. The plot was mesmerising enough for me to choose my pick, but I was not simply not prepared to read something that would influence so much that I would think about it even after six months. The book was very hyped and unlike so many, this book not only lived upto it's expectations, but surpassed it by a long way.

The thoughts espoused are so profound, the ideas, the discussions are so thought provoking that you would actually stop reading the book mid way and ponder over what you just read and then marvel at them. To add to it, these thoughts find expression in the form of beautiful quotes. So eloquent and poetic that you would end up marking them on the book or jotting them down on a notebook. I tried marking the pages, halfway through the book I realised that it was a futile exercise. The whole book was littered with ugly marks and I understood that I wasn't reading something that was an everyday read and that I was reading something that would influence me profoundly.

The author is an Australian fugitive, who had to resort to armed robberies to satisfy his cravings for heroin. The book is an account of the eight years that he spent in Bombay when on run from the Australian police. From the Mumbai underworld to Bollywood across to fighting with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, Shantaram is an epic of a story..with some profound quotes.. I cant resist not listing some. Again, the author is at his best when sad.

The thing is, I can drone all night long when it comes to Shantaram and people who know me can vouch for that. So, I'd rather do what I intended to do with this post. Quote Gregory Roberts.

 

It was very difficult to pick up just sixteen from the book. But here's my collection:-

 

1. The biggest problem with corruption as a form of government, is that it works so well.

2. Once Karla asked me, "What characterizes the human race, cruelty or the capacity to feel ashamed for it?" I thought the question to be acutely clever when I first heard it, but I'm lonelier and wiser now, and I know it isn't cruelty or shame that characterizes the human race.It's forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would've annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

3. Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.

4. Every virtuous act has some dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a mystery that can’t be solved.

5.Nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.

6. Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.

7. I don't know what I fear more, the power that crushes us, or our never ending capacity to endure it.

8. A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare.

9. Nothing fits the hand so perfectly , or feels so right , or inspires so much protective instinct , as the hand of a child.

10. Love cannot be tested....honesty can, and loyalty....but not love...love goes on forever, once it starts, even if we come to hate the person, we love....love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us which does not die..."

11. 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, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone...

12.

Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope.
Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.
In the end that's all there really is : Love and it's duty,Sorrow and its truth..
In the end that's all we really have - to hold on tight until the dawn...

13. We know who we are and we define what we are by references to the people we love and our reasons for loving them.

14.

"Sooner or later,fate puts us together with all the people,one by one,who show us what we could and should not let ourselves become. Sooner or later we meet the drunkard,the waster,the betrayer,the ruthless mind and the hate-filled heart. But fate loads the dice,of course,because we usually find ourselves loving or pitying almost all of those people.And its impossible to despise someone you honestly pity and to shun someone you truly love..."

15. There is nothing as depressing as good advice.  :D :D

16.  It's such a huge arrogance, to love someone, and there's too much of it around. There's to much love in the world. Sometimes I think that's what heaven is - a place where everybody's happy because nobody loves anybody else, ever.