“The pain in Vinay’s voice disturbed Radhika. “Shangri-La is a state of mind, Vinay. If you’re happy, then everything around you will be okay and in harmony. Nothing is perfect anywhere. We must find our own paradise amidst the chaos. Just the way a beautiful lotus blooms in dirty water.”

“Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home.”

“A fool’s paradise is a wise man’s hell.”

“Spread kindness, caring, and compassion and create your own paradise. Infuse it with joy and you’ve created heaven on earth.”

“For Nietzsche, woman was God’s second mistake. But what then is the first? I don’t know, even if I believed in the God of Abraham and Abrahamic religions, it would be a bit diffucult for me to answer it. However, based on the religious scriptures, one can assume that God was a bit disappointed with his masterpiece — Adam, realised that life in Paradise seems a bit incomplete, uninteresting for him, he cannot find the meaning of his life, therefore God decided to correct his mistake by creating Eve to be Adam’s love. As a result, with the help of Eve, eating fruit from the forbidden tree in Paradise, both of them had to abandon there. However, God couldn’t do anything, because he had already made his second mistake — he created such a charming and deceitful being for Adam’s mind. Perhaps, this is just the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, nevertheless, I am convinced that the woman is a charming and deceitful being for male mind.”

“but what if God have seen,And death ensue? then I shall be no more,And Adam wedded to another Eve,Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;A death to think. Confirmed then I resolve,Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe:So dear I love him, that with him all deathsI could endure, without him live no life.”

“Some would say that paradise is the escapist ‘fiction’ of hapless minds caught up in the denial of a darkening world. But Christmas would say that the ‘paradise’ of escapist fiction has not a single shred of fiction in it at all.”

“Paradise is not something that we create. Rather, it is something that we find.”

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)… ‘I spoke to three scholars,’ [the character says ‘at last.’] …two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]’ …I can see that he’s excited. [narrator]’ …Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a ‘literary’ writer based on this quote. A ‘literary’ author knows that a character’s excitement should be ‘shown’ in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator’s commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the ‘I can see that he’s excited’ sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho … Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), ‘a remote human possibility.’ He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”

“God hides the fires of hell within paradise.”

“In monasteries, seminaries, retreats and synagogues, they fear hell and seek paradise. Those who know the mysteries of God never let that seed be planted in their souls.”

“Why can’t these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.”

“wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.”

“You deal with mythological stuff for a few years, you learn that paradises are usually places where you get killed.”

“I am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)”