Gregory David Roberts

But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can’t be stilled.

‘Abdul has a pet theory, Lin,’ said Khaled, the dour Palestinian. ‘He believes that certain men are cursed with qualities, such as great courage, that make them commit desperate acts. He calls it the hero curse, the thing that compels them to lead other men to bloodshed and chaos. He might be right, I think, but he goes on about it so much he drives us all crazy.’

His definition was sharp, and barbed enough-suffering is happiness, backwards-to hook a fish of memory.

His simple, unbeautiful words were the clearest expression of what all prisoners, and everyone else who lives long enough, know well-that suffering, of every kind, is always a matter of what we’ve lost. When we’re young, we think that suffering is something that’s done to us. When we get older-when the steel door slams shut, in one way or another-we know that real suffering is measured by what’s taken away from us.

‘Is easy-suffering is hungry, isn’t it? Hungry, for anything, means suffering. Not hungry for something, means, not suffering. But everybody knows that.’

Some of the worst wrongs, Karla once said, were caused by people who tried to change things.

But I was born without it, and I’ve never known spite or bitterness. I got angry and I got desperate and did bad things too often, until I stopped, but I never hated anyone, or consciously wished anyone harm, not even men who tortured me

And while a small measure of bitterness might’ve protected me from time to time, as it sometimes does, I’ve learned that sweet memories don’t walk through cynical doors.

He was authentic. He expressed the uniqueness when what we are, is what we’re free to become. I’d known him through lost loves

No smile would work, no goodbye would pray, no kindness would save, if the truth inside us wasn’t beautiful. And the true heart of us, our human kind, is that we’re connected, at our best, by purities of love found in no other creature