Gregory David Roberts

“She loved the guy. She did it for him. She 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. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take you down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people here. I think that’s why I’m sick of love.”

“If fate doesn't make you laugh, you just don't get the joke.”

“If fate doesn't make you laugh, then you just don't get the joke.”

“And if you did this, if you saved your mother from this vicious killer, would you be doing the wrong thing or the right thing?""The right thing," I said just as swiftly."No, Lin, I'm afraid not," he frowned. "We have just seen that in the terms of this new, objective definition of good and evil, killing is always wrong because, if everyone did it, we would not move toward God, the ultimate complexity, with the rest of the universe. So it is wrong to kill. But your reasons were good. So therefore, the truth of this decision is that you did the wrong thing, for the right reasons ...”

“Sometimes, when you live a life at such a wild edge, an extreme edge of experience, you can come back into the world - if you come back at all - with some essence from that experience that people find useful.”

“I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.”

“Crime is stupid, lazy and weak. You can only exploit it and make money out of it.”

“Once you love something, you can never stop loving it. Even after a divorce, the heart will not stop loving.”

“There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get - who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.”

“Powerful people have no regrets.”

“I think it is a part of growing up, learning to control our suffering.”

“Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them, the more you wish they’d never happened.”

“There are few things more discomfiting than a spontaneous outburst of genuine decency from someone you’re determined to dislike for no good reason.”

“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.”

“A city may be dirty on the outside but is clean on the inside. Many cities in the world are clean on the outside but dirty on the inside.”

“A good man is as strong as the right woman needs him to be.”

“I've been to Delhi, Madras, Bangalore and a lot of other cities, but I have never seen a crime set-up like that in Bombay.”

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”

“The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding indefatigable and distant past that had crashed intact through barriers of time into its own future. I liked it.”

“A politician is someone who promises a bridge even when there's no water”