The more you try to be like someone else, the more you find yourself standing in the way.

The touch was exactly what the touch of a lover's hand should be: familiar, yet exciting as a whispered promise. I felt an almost irresistible urge to take her hand and place it flat against my chest, near my heart. Maybe I should've done it. I know now that she would've laughed, if I'd done it, and she would've liked me for it. But strangers that we were then, we stood for five long seconds and held the stare, while all the parallel worlds, all the parallel lives that might've been, and never would be, whirled around us.

The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it. - Karla

I know now that when the loving, honest moment comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare form heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.

You know the difference between news and gossip, don't you? News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it.

The truth is that the man I am was born in those moments, as I stood near the flood sticks with my face lifted to the chrismal rain. Shantaram. The better man that, slowly, and much too late, I began to be.

The past reflects eternally between two mirrors - the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn't do or say.