Browsing Quotes, page 116
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“We have a saying, in the Pashto language, and the meaning of it is that you are not a man until you give your love, truly and freely, to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:10 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
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.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:09 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I thought you didn’t like kids.”
“I don’t. They’re so …innocent. Except they’re not. They know exactly what they want, and they don’t stop till they get it. It’s disgusting. All the worst people I know are just like big, grown-up children.”Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:08 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I shook hands with him, his small hand vanishing in mine. Nothing ever fits the palm so perfectly, or feels so right, or inspires so much protective instinct as the hand of a child.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:08 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I don’t know what scares me more,” she declared, “the madness that smashes people down, or their ability to endure it.”
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I don’t know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us or our endless ability to endure it.Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:07 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“In this way justice is done,” Quasim Ali said that night, his bark-colored eyes softening on the two young men, “because justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us and must be punished by us. You can see, by what we have done with these two boys, that justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:06 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Suffering,” Khaderbhai once told me, “is the way we test our love, especially our love for God.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:04 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I said that the truth is found more often in music,” he repeated, “than it is in books of philosophy.”
“What is the truth?” I asked him. I didn’t really want to know. I was trying to hold up my end of the conversation. I was trying to be clever.
“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.”Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:04 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“It is strange, at first, to think in the right way. But there are a few things we can know, a few things to be sure of, and it is relatively easy. Let me show you. To know the truth, all you have to do is close your eyes.”
“It’s that easy?” I laughed.
“Yes. All you have to do is close your eyes. We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.”Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 9:00 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Fate has every power over us, but two. Fate cannot control our free will, and fate cannot lie. Men lie, to themselves more than to others, and to others more often then they tell the truth. But fate does not lie.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:59 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“There is no believing in God,” he declared, smiling again. “We either know God, or we do not.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:58 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:57 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure or 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.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:56 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
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.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:55 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
We all turned to stare at her. The table was silent. We were stunned to hear such sentiments expressed by a young woman who made her living as the sexual plaything of those Indians who were rich enough to exploit her. She was used and abused, and I, for one, would’ve expected her to be more cynical. 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 humor, and it turns up where you least expect it.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:54 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Fanatics,” Didier mused, ignoring the rebuke, “always seem to have the same scrubbed and staring look about them. They have the look of people who do not masturbate, but who think about it almost all the time.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:53 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would’ve done anything for him. Some women 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 girls here. I think that’s why I’m sick of love.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:52 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“Friendship is something that gets harder to understand, every damn year of my life. Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes. In my worst moods, I think the best you can say is that a friend is anyone you don’t despise.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:52 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
“I wouldn’t take too much notice of what Didier says. He can be very superficial, especially when he’s being serious. He’s the kind who gets right down to the skin of things, if you know what I mean. I told him once he’s so shallow that the best he can manage is a single entendre. The funny thing is, he liked it. I’ll say this for Didier, you can’t insult him.”
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:51 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
We walked slowly. I looked up often at the sky, so heavy with stars that the black net of night was bulging, overflowing with its glittering haul. Imprisonment meant years without a sunrise, a sunset, or a night sky, locked in a cell for sixteen hours each day, from early afternoon to late morning. Imprisonment meant that they took away the sun and the moon and the stars. Prison wasn’t hell, but there was no heaven in it, either. In its own way, that was just as bad.
Speaker: Gregory David RobertsPosted: 19 Aug 2008 at 8:50 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment!
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