Gregory David Roberts

His second mistake was that he held the knife as if it was a sword and he was in a fencing match. A man uses an underhand grip when he expects his knife, like a gun, to do the fighting for him. But a knife isn't a gun, of course, and in a knife fight it isn't the weapon that does the fighting: it's the man. The knife is just there to help him finish it. The winning grip is a dagger hold, with the blade downward, and the fis

injured by the wound but not ravaged by it

a smile of indulgent patience

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.’

And I'd learned, the hard way, that sometimes, even with the purest intentions, we make things worse when we do our best to make things better.

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