Shantaram Quotes

"I worked at the Palace, but it was just a job, and all I ever made out of it was money. She's the one who made it dirty. She's the one who made it a…a sick thing. Karla's the one who'll do anyth...

Ulla was speaking with Karla in a mixture of German and English that, by accident or intent, obscured the most interesting parts of her conversation. (1.2.63)

It was the work of a second, the eye contact between us. It was just long enough for me to decide to trust him—the little man with the big smile. I didn't know it then, but it was one of the best...

"British built this jail, in the time of Raj," he hissed at me, showing teeth. "They did chain Indian men here, whip them here, hang them here, until dead. Now we run the jail, and you are a Britis...

"Ah, it is not only brown sugar [heroin] and hashish that comes from Afghanistan into India," he confided, lowering his voice and speaking from the corner of his mouth once more. "There are guns, h...

"It's good to know what's wrong with the world," Karla said, after a while. "But it's just as important to know that sometimes, no matter how wrong it is, you can't change it. A lot of the bad stuf...

Like brown and black dunes, the acres of slums rolled away from the roadside, and met the horizon with dirty heat-haze mirages. The miserable shelters were patched together from rags, scraps of pla...

I'd escaped from prison almost two years before, but the fact of the fugitive life is that you have to keep on escaping, every day and every night. (1.1.9)

"I am French," he replied, admiring the dew on his half-raised glass, "I am gay, I am Jewish, and I am a criminal, more or less in that order. Bombay is the only city I have ever found that allows...

The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air. [...] It's the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilisations in resurrection and decay. It's the b...