Quotes from Shantaram (VIII) on Curses

May you have ten daughters, and may they all marry well.

--Indian curse

Quotes from Shantaram (VII) on Love-Induced Beauty

"And there was something new and very different in her manner: a warm, unhurried softness in her smile; a willing laugh that won the laughter of others; and a lightness of spirit that looked for and often found the best in those she met. For weeks, months, I'd watched those changes shift and settle in her... After a time, I began to see how deep the well of her loving was, and how much her happiness and confidence depended on drawing that love into the light, and sharing it. And love was beautiful in her. It was a clear sky she gave us with those eyes, and a summer morning with her smile."

Quotes from Shantaram (VI) on Killing Love

"They lied to me and betrayed me, leqaving 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. You can't even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can't kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. Every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good: it's a part of God, or what we call God, and it can never die."

Quotes from Shantaram (V) on Our Greatest Fear

"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. For I still love you with the whole of my heart, Prabaker. I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowwning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep."

Quotes from Shantaram (IV) on Why We Crave Love

"One of the reasons 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 in to 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."

Quotes from Shantaram (III) on Time

"I think... a little bit almost quite very soon, and not long."

--Prabaker

Quotes from Shantaram (II) on Truth

"There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn' t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart."

Quotes from Shantaram (I) on Voices

"The voice is more than half of love."

--Afghan matchmaker

The Iron of My Eyes (by Gregory David Roberts)

The Iron of My Eyes

Oh my beloved,
After dreaming night when I woke
it was a strange and worrying thing
to find you standing
at the morning's dawn-eyed window
silent,
shedding tears,
your face like a flower
the sky has bruised with summer rain.

The last teardrop crossed your lips.
You turned slowly, came into my arms
and sensed my concern,
but your smile and answering kiss
laughed,
ringing clear,
the sound like water
splashing in an oasis well.

It was not suffering, you said,
nor some fear or hurt that made you weep.
The tears that you shed
as you watched me sleeping came from
happiness,
rising sheer,
the joy like thunder
trembling in drought's red river bed.

Love-struck happiness broke your heart
you said,
with such sweet pleasure in the breaking
that your very smile,
radiant with soul-fired changes
transformed,
jewelling tears,
your light like sunrise
gleaming the dew-diamond desert.

It is a mystery to me
how this joy with tearful heartbreak sits,
but if pleasure set your tears free
then break your heart against the iron of my eyes,
woman,
and break it there again,
and again,
as often as you like.
I will pick up all the shattered pieces
one by one,
and press them to my lips,
to seal each precious fragment
with adoration's kiss.

The Begging Rain

I am reading a stunning novel called Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and while looking for other books from him, found this.

The Begging Rain

Afterwards
when I am not with you
and you are alone enough
to count the nails in your heart,
tough
and studded like a treasure-house door,
when you arrange your silences
in the vase of an hour,
balancing the bouquet with memories
of hands held,
a spike of laughter
and the colour of my eyes,

when you sit within the swell
of your heartbeat
and the purple tide of daydream
laps at the shore of all your selves,
and your skin sings, perfume-pierced,

Afterwards,
surrender to this thought of me:
as the mimosas of Maharashtra in May
long for monsoon
I long for you;
as the crimson cactus flowers of Thar
long for full moon
I long for you,
and in all my afterwards,
when I am not with you,
my heart turns toward the window of my life
and begs for rain.