Quotes from book

Shantaram

“The best revenge, like the best sex, is performed slowly, and with the eyes open.”

“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.”

“Powerful people have no regrets.”

“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.”

“A lot of bad stuff in the world wasn’t really that bad until someone tried to change it.”

“We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.”

“The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love”

“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're dead and gone.”

“The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on.”

“The choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

“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.”

“I don't know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it.”

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.”

“Every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret.”

“There's no such thing as forever.”

“Heroes only come in three kinds:dead, damaged or dubious.”

“The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.

- Karla”

“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like”

“Fanatics have the look of people who do not masturbate but who think about it almost all time.”