A lot of bad stuff in the world wasn’t really that bad until someone tried to change it.

The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's nowhere else in the world where that's quite so true.

If we can't respect the way we earn it, money has no value. If we can't use it to make life better for our families and loved ones, money has no purpose.

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 humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like

While I was chained to a wall and being tortured, I realized, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

Shantaram is the second in the series of a quartet of novels that I have planned about my life but is the first to be written. The third book is a sequel to Shantaram, the first a prequel.