For all his wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested and loyalty. But there is no test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.

— Gregory David Roberts

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.

— Gregory David Roberts

Give me an honest frown over a false smile, any day.

— Gregory David Roberts

Happiness is a myth. It was invented to make us buy new things.

— Gregory David Roberts

...he'd been able to deal with that pain because he'd accepted his own part in causing it

— Gregory David Roberts

I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky.

— Gregory David Roberts

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

— Gregory David Roberts

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

— Gregory David Roberts

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Shader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so I tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss.

— Gregory David Roberts

I looked at the people, then, and I saw how busy they were - how much industry and energy described their lives.

— Gregory David Roberts