“That single moment's intensity hasn't been matched in my life before or since. A woman I didn't know had chosen to accept me, in body and mind. Perhaps it is this instant that forms the basis of tr...”

“Amma and i went to each house to tell them we were leaving. They all said, 'Don't forget us. Keep visiting.' At the age I was then, this seemed absurd. i had grown up among them - how was it even p...”

“Silence descended on the house. [....] Amma must have sensed that this was the sort of silence that, left unchallenged, could consume the family from within.”

“Amma and Malati called her a beggar, a whore, and it was clear from the disbelief on her face that she had never been spoken to in such manner. [....] On that day I became convinced that it is the ...”

“We had no compunction toward our enemies [the ants] and took to increasingly desperate and violent means of dealing with them. If we noticed they'd laid siege to a snack, we might trap them in a ci...”

“Appa enjoys our current prosperity with considerable hesitation, as if it were undeserved. Hes given to quoting a proverb that says wealth shouldnt strike suddenly like a visitation, but instead gr...”

“He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”

“Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.”

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.''In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All ...”

“Seekers, what are you seeking? Why aren't you happy just to be alive?”

“What if my greatest disappointments, or the aching of this life, is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy?”

“You must have a level of discontent to feel the urge to want to grow.”

“To know India and her peoples, one has to know the monsoon. one has to know the monsoon. It is not enough to read about it in books, or see it on the cinema screen, or hear someone talk about it. I...”

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle th...”

“Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be wholly comfortable. I had always had my own way in the marriage about what wed do,...”