shantaram.

i am honestly suprised i finished this book...for the sole reason that it is almost ONE THOUSAND pages long.
its a brick.
i was intimidated at first, but i knew i had to read it.
i was buying the lonely planet book for india - when the check out guy told me "you HAVE to read 'shantaram,'" i wrote it down.
then i saw it at elisa's house, sitting on the bookshelf.
then my friend nicole said she was thinking of reading it.
anyway, when there are three signs, its meant to be.
everyone knows that.

it took me a couple months to finish, but it has become one of my favorite books. Gregory David Roberts (the author) has created a website and a following around this book with seminars and discussion forums. its kind of a big deal :)

here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book...

"I dont know what frightens me more, the power that crushes us, or our endless ability to endure it." (Karla)

"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."

"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."

"One of the ironies of courage and why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for somone else than we do for ourselves alone."

"Heroin is a sensory deprivation tank for the soul. Floating on the dead sea of the drug stone, there's no sense of pain, no regret or shame, no feelings of guilt or grief, no depression and no desire. The sleeping universe enters and envelops every atom of existence. Insensible stillness and peace disperse fear and suffering. Thoughts drift like ocean weeds and vanish into distant, grey somnolency, unpercieved and indeterminable. The body succumbs to cryogenic slumber: the listless heart beats faintly, and breathing slowly fades to random whispers. Thick nirvanic numbness clogs the limbs, and downward, deeper, the sleeper slides and glides towards oblivion, the perfect and eternal stone."


"And I looked at the men, the brave and beautiful men beside me, running into the guns and God help me for thinking it, and God forgive me for saying it, but it was glorious, it was glorious, if glory is a magnificient and raptured exaltation. It was what love would be like, if love were a sin. It was what music would be, if music could kill you. And I climbed a prison wall with every running step."

"Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom they give to us, even those dreaded and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be."