Gregory David Roberts is an Australian author best known for his novel Shantaram. He is a former heroin addict and convicted bank robber who escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980 and fled to India, where he lived for ten years.
There is debate as to how much of Shantaram is based on true events or is a conflation of real life and fantasy. On that aspect of Shantaram and of the follow-up novel, The Mountain Shadow, Roberts has stated:
Some experiences from my life are described pretty much as they happened, and others are created narratives, informed by my experience. I wanted to write two or three novels on some bare elements from my life, allowing me to explore the themes that interested me, while keeping the narrative immediate by anchoring it to some of my real experiences. They’re novels, not autobiographies, and all of the characters and dialogue is created. It doesn’t matter how much of it is true or not to me, it’s how true they are to all of us, and to our common humanity.
(via Wikipedia)
Lets take a look at his best Quotes and Verbs from Shantaram and his other beautiful poems.
On Love:
Love is a one-way street. Love, like respect isn’t something you get; it’s something you give
(From: Shantaram)
Love is the opposite of power. That’s why we fear it so much.
(From: Shantaram)
Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. (From: Shantaram)
She loved the guy. She did it for him and 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. (From: Shantaram)
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 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. (From: Shantaram)
Nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be. (From: Shantaram)
On Happiness:
Happiness is a myth.
(From: Shantaram)
On Optimism:
Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it’s exactly like love in three ways: it’s pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.
(From: Shantaram)
The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,’ he said. ‘It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God. (From: Shantaram)
On Life:
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. (From: Shantaram)
On Revenge:
They’d lied to me and betrayed me, leaving jagged edges where all my trust had been, and I didn’t like or respect or admire them any more, but still I loved them. I had no choice. I understood that, perfectly, standing in the white wilderness of snow. You can’t kill love, can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. And can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. (From: Shantaram)
It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. (From: Shantaram)
Sometimes you break your heart in the right way, if you know what I mean.
On Fate:
Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.
There are no mistakes. Only new paths to explore.