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• About the time I transitioned from being an emotionally disturbed teenager to a hardcore outlaw, I began to view the material world as a temporary illusion crippled by human boundaries.
• Torn between the freewheeling lifestyle of a smuggler and being an austere spiritual seeker, there was a lot to sort out.
• Being legal or illegal often depended upon what side of a border I was standing on.
• A quiet disposition, warmth and imagination are prerequisites that moderate the chaos in a smuggler’s life, so I reciprocated with a beatific smile of my own.
• As I became Americanized, the gap between my parents and me, even at such a tender age, had already grown to unmanageable proportions.
• Kneeling at my side to check my attitude, he brushed the snow from my face.
• God was some vague, powerful character that grown-ups harped on with varying degrees of reverent conviction.
• He thought the man should have a cyclopean eye or some other distinguishing characteristic that would make the situation more discernible.
• Mario made me feel like I belonged and I willfully flicked on the felonious switch.
• It made perfect sense to view everyone as a cop so I wouldn’t end up in Bangkok’s Klong Prem Central prison on Ngamwongwan Road.
• The pilot taxied us to the edge of the jungle where an old, dilapidated military jeep waited to take us to a place I was no longer sure I wanted to go.
• Ancient and deadly, Asia would grow on me like the jungle that swallows everything in it.
• He knew that I wasn’t being nurtured like other children, so he made it his personal mission to give me an edge.
• I had only wanted to escape the sour halitosis of middle-class decay and the dead-end ramblings of my philosophy professors at the University of Wisconsin.
• All the cells in my being were trying to shut their tiny little doors to keep out the sudden infestation of the dragon and his hordes of relentless devils.
• Philip was like a shooting star whose spectacular tail burned across the financial sky for decades.
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Marjan. (600 Devils: From refugee to redemption, a life impacted by smuggling, cannabis, psychedelics, conmen, cops and assorted holy men.)