“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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“Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao”
― Dai Sijie, quote from Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
“But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what’s going on in his heart and mind.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
“Either I’m right,” he continued, “and he doesn’t exist, or you’re right, and he’s the kind of God who watches children die. The kind of God who sits around while men like Herod build palaces and good people starve. Either way, he’s not worth worshipping.”
― Seth Grahame-Smith, quote from Unholy Night
“It was possible, as far as they knew, that the western shore, which in fifty years’ time would be christened New Jersey, was in fact the backdoor of China, that India, with its steamy profusion of gods and curries, lay just beyond those bluffs.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
“It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Blackbringer
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Ivy and BeanBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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