32 quotes found
“How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness”
“the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair”
“Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.”
“democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion”
“Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder”
“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
“...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.”
“Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.”
“You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between ho...”
“People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.”
“Look at that crowd', he said disgustedly. 'They think it's a circus.''And not a single coin are they donating', said Dina.'That's not surprising. Pity can only be shown in small doses. When so many...”
“God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles dont fit well t...”
“Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.”
“The future was becoming past, everything vanished into the void, and reaching back to grasp for something, one came out clutching - what? A bit of string, scraps of cloth, shadows of the golden tim...”
“...I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom - it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the...”
“Narayan explained how they had spent the morning, and Dukhi laughed to hear it. the entire episode made Radha furious. "Why must you torment the boy? There is no need to make my Om do such dirty wo...”
“What an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a...”
“Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus”
“The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.”
“Who would want to enter the soiled Temple of Justice, wherein lies the corpse of justice, slain by her very guardians? And now her killers make mock of the sacred process, selling replicas of her b...”
“Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.”
“Maneck studied beggermaster's excessive chatter, his attempt to hide his heartache. Why did human do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put someth...”
