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"As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest."
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"In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt."
"Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail.com."
"I know always that I am an outsider, a stranger in this century and among those who are still men."
"I no longer feel any allegiance to these monsters called human beings, despise being one myself."
"I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell- I don't know why exactly."
"Sometimes I almost pity them. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame can touch me. Because I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing, I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenant's Whore."
"Whether I was a genius or not did not so much concern me as the fact that I simply did not want a part of anything. The animal-drive and energy of my fellow man amazed me: that a man could change tires all day long or drive an ice cream truck or run for Congress or cut into a man's guts in surgery or murder, this was all beyond me. I did not want to begin. I still don't. Any day I that I could cheat away from this system of living seemed a good victory for me."
"We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams."
"I'm not a bad person. I haven't killed anyone. I (rarely) lie. I don't kick little puppies. So why do people look at me as if the world would be a better place without me?"
"It was almost painful to be different."
Explore more quotes by Tahir Shah
"Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realizing it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them."
"The situation was different in the jungle. Every inch of ground had to be earned, and was done so through much exertion with the blade."
"In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough."
"Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things."
"Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones."
"Venture to a remote corner of a faraway land and, from the moment you get there, every person and every thing becomes an obstacle, designed to entrap you, to stop you proceeding on your way."
"In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm."
"My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves."
"My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it."
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