“Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“Calcutta's the only city I know where you are actively encouraged to stop strangers at random for a quick chat.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“What came next was a new experience for for both the fish and me”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“Calcutta has spectacular over-employment. In the West, where we're obsessed with slashing the numbers of workers for the sake of it, we drool at the idea of more, faster computers, fewer humans. But as we struggle to adopt an ever-changing technology, we lose sight of the satisfaction that only a finely tuned human system can provide.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
“Returning to a city that one has known and loved fills you with a delicious sense of warmth.”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice
Tahir Shah
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
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“He seems so drugged up and slow. I miss his laughter, his impulsiveness, his wacky sense of humour, even his obsessive practicing. It makes me wonder who he actually is. If the old Flynn was ill – courtesy of a chemical imbalance in the brain – is this lithiumed Flynn the real MyCoy? Or perhaps both characters are just facets of a hidden, deeper soul that I have yet to meet. I just don’t know. Sometimes I fear that the drug-free Flynn searingly manic, then catastrophically depressed – is who he really is. But because in that form he is not acceptable to conventional society, he has to be drugged so that his emotions are tempered and his behavior controlled. Perhaps we are blindly living in an Orwellian society where individualism is feared and the biggest pressure is the one to conform. Perhaps Flynn is sane and the rest of the world is mad. The thoughts go round and round in my head.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, quote from A Voice in the Distance
“Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.”
― Silas House, quote from A Parchment of Leaves
“Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Iced
“These were colours he'd never ever seen before; ones he couldn't possibly begin to name. Here, to his left, was a wooden clock, and it was painted, well not exactly green, but a colour that green might like to be if it had any imagination at all. And over there, beside the wooden board game whose overriding colour was not red, but something that red might look at enviously, blushing with embarrassment at its own dull appearance. And the wooden letter sets, well, there were those who might have said that they were painted yellow and blue, but they would have said this knowing that such plain words were an outrageous insult to the colouring on the letters themselves.”
― John Boyne, quote from Noah Barleywater Runs Away
“Who do you belong to, Syd?”
“You, Jack.”
“Say it, Syd.”
“I belong to you.”
― Vi Keeland, quote from Belong to You
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