Phantom Life Quotes

“I fucking romanticize the idea of disappearing forever.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“But real travel—It makes you a permanent exile. You are too changed to fit back into the mold of your old life, but you are too inherently foreign to ever truly belong to the places you visit. You become a ghost, haunting airports and hotel bars, perpetually looking for that next hit of pure, unfiltered reality.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“While the girl to my right places one final bet. She's praying I carry the cash for the room, As we hide from the dawn and the impending gloom.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“People think I’m an explorer. They think I have this hunger for the world.
Bullsh*t. I’m just scared.
The moment things get real, the moment someone gets close enough to smell the rot... I buy a ticket to nowhere just to get away from the possibility of being hurt.
It’s not noble. It’s not poetic.
The road is the only thing that can’t reject you. So you stick to the road. It’s cold, but at least it’s safe.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Funny of you to never know which moments become core memories.

You spend your whole life trying to orchestrate these perfect, cinematic moments.

The kiss in the rain. The grand gesture.
But then... it’ll be a random Tuesday.

You’re just sitting on the floor eating cold takeout, and she laughs at something stupid you said with her mouth full.

And you don’t know it yet, but you are going to be thinking about that exact laugh on your deathbed.

It's beautiful, but... it is a ruthless trick of the mind.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to read every goddamn book ever written.

I want to watch every movie, travel to every forgotten corner of the map,

I want to love every beautiful, complicated woman on this earth.

But you can’t. Because one life is just unfairly, criminally small.

So what do you do?

You just try to drink the ocean through a straw,
and hope you don't drown.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Here’s the tragedy of the situation, I’m too busy looking for God in all the wrong places.

I wander the shady streets, looking into the eyes of the lost or in the laugh of a strangers sharing a cheap beer.

I’m looking for salvation at the bottom of a glass & in the gutters and in the love of the hookers.

What a terrible, poetic excuse for procrastination.

He ain't here, motherf*kers…”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”