“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...”

“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 ...”

“When you have no choice, you have no discontent either.”

“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...”

“Zachary smiles, and I wonder if he's felling different. Because standing out here waist deep in Gossimer Lake, next to my best friend, I'm feeling different-light and good and maybe even holy.”

“Don't make me sit through reality.”

“My wishing star glowed slightly and winked back at me. I could almost hear its voice, tinkling like wind chimes and church bells, reassuring me that everything would return to normal.”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“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,...”