|
aafb196
|
I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
17178fe
|
Never choose something because it's easier.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
2440f1f
|
wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you'll wait forever.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
289a463
|
Hope not built on reason brings disappointment only.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
4bbfa97
|
Doesn't the imagination always exaggerate--or diminish--truth?
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
39dcf1b
|
You could also call it waking,' Krishna continues. 'Or intermission, as one scene in a play ends and the next hasn't yet begun.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
d1d104e
|
She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue.
|
|
inspirational
colours
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
6d50107
|
the bird began to carry them to a new life in a new land. We'll be happy ever after, the queen wanted to whisper to her daughter as they flew, but she knew that was not true. Life never is that way. And so instead she held her daughter in silence, heart to heart, and as they traveled each heart drew on the other's strength, so that when they reached their destination they would be ready.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
ab23ad9
|
Each desire in the world is different, as is each love.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
5665f99
|
She had always been this way: interested-quite unnecessarily, some would say-in the secrets of strangers. When flying, she always chose a window seat so that when the plane took off or landed, she could look down on the tiny houses and imagine the lives of the people who inhabited them.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
acc1039
|
we cannot force ourselves to love--or to withhold it. At best, we can curb our actions. The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
32f24e1
|
But truth, when it's being lived, is less glamorous than our imaginings.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
74550c6
|
each person is distinct, separate. That ultimately we are each alone
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
80ee073
|
Isn't that what truth is? The force of a person's believing seeps into those around him--into the very earth and air and water--until there's nothing else.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
8c29c1b
|
What did I learn that day in the sabha? All this time I'd believed in my power over my husbands. I'd believed that because they loved me they would do anything for me. But now I saw that though they did love me--as much perhaps as any man can love--there were other things they loved more. Their notions of honor, of loyalty toward each other, of reputation were more important to them than my suffering. They would avenge me later, yes, but on..
|
|
women
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
b9c8a5d
|
Push away the past, that vessel in which all emotions curdle to regret.
|
|
fiction
immigrant-experience
indian-authors
wisdom-quotes
mothers-and-daughters
novel
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
88cd304
|
I thought that if lokas existed at all, good women would surely go to one where men were not allowed so that they could be finally free of male demands.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
cfa811b
|
Ii would no longer waste time on regret. I would turn my face to the future and carve it into the shape I wanted. - Panchali
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
0fac929
|
The mark of a wise man is that he changes his mind when he sees mistake.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
043d879
|
Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as reality, an objective and untouched nature of being. Or if all that we encounter has already been changed by what we had imagined it to be. If we have dreamed it into being.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
a3e14bc
|
I closed my eyes and willed my breath to slow, my conscious mind to fold itself inward. I could feel heat pulsing from my daughter's head, her frantic thoughts whirling like broken glass. I loosened my hold on my body and dropped into that whirlpool.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
1ddc560
|
I don't put much stock in remembering things. Being able to forget is a superior skill.
|
|
fiction
indian-american
divakaruni
immigrant-fiction
indian
mothers-and-daughters
houston
novel
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
b37038e
|
I broke the first rule, the unwritten one, meant not just for warriors but all of us: I took love and used it as a balm to soothe my ego.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
f92bbfa
|
Distance is a great promoter of harmony:
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
f40c605
|
Even the wisest don't know what's hidden in the depths of their being
|
|
pg-40
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
8cbf527
|
But Krishna was a chameleon.
|
|
palace-of-illusions
krishna
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
ddd8169
|
Every person has a heart, but we're not always lucky enough to get a glimpse of it. And every heart, even the hardest, has a fragile spot. If you hit it there, it shatters.
|
|
love
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
9b58228
|
Girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
55f5943
|
The wind blows through him, cleansing. Salt and distance, smell of the deep.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
1785bb3
|
You aren't some weak-willed wench. You can control your emotions. Remember all that you've survived. Behave like the queen you are. No one can take your dignity away from you. You lose it only by your own actions.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
b600f90
|
The power of a man is like a bull's charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey. Know the particular properties of your power. Unless you use it correctly, it won't get you what you want." His words perplexed me. Wasn't power singular and simple? In the world that I knew, men just happened to have more of it. (I hoped to change this.)"
|
|
women
strength
power
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
768d9c6
|
Rakhi likes the comfortable clutter of her life, the things she loves gathered around her like a shawl against the winterliness of the world.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
6acd669
|
Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, our lives. Is that why we're fascinated by the steadfastness of stars? The water reaches my calves. I begin the story of the Pleiades, women transformed into birds so Swift and bright that no man could snare them.
|
|
fiction
indian-american
divakaruni
immigrant-experience
indian-authors
women-s-fiction
mothers-and-daughters
novel
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
e536391
|
Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we're willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
6a756ef
|
Love. There's no argument, no matter how strong, that can overcome that word.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
c6ff757
|
The story hangs in the night air between them. It is very latem, and if father or daugther stepped to the window, tehyw ould see the Suktara, star of the impending dawn, hanging low in the sky. But they keep sitting at the table, each thinking of the story differently, as teller and listener always must. In the mind of each, different images swirl up and fall away, and each holds on to a different part of the story, thinking it the most imp..
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
3575a3a
|
All the way back, I pondered the word endure, what it meant. It didn't mean giving in. It didn't mean being weak or accepting injustice. It meant taking the challenges thrown at us and dealing with them as intelligently as we knew until we grew stronger than them.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
bc99bb1
|
Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.
|
|
dread
danger
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
133ad1c
|
A well-meaning man, Dhai Ma liked to say, is more dangerous because he believes in the rightness of what he does. Give me an honest rascal any day!
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
dd0c8fd
|
Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing. Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power?
|
|
story
storytelling
mythology
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
083e797
|
Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
1a5f4c1
|
What is the nature of life? Life is lines of dominoes falling. One thing leads to another, and then another, just like you'd planned. But suddenly a Domino gets skewed, events change direction, people dig in their heels, and you're faced with a situation that you didn't see coming, you who thought you were so clever.
|
|
relationships
fiction
love
women-s-books
indian-american
divakaruni
immigrant-fiction
mothers-and-daughters
novel
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
1158f01
|
Can our actions change our destiny? Or are they like sand piled against the breakage in a dam, merely delaying the inevitable?
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
|
994e08e
|
Loving someone so deeply was dangerous. It made you too vulnerable.
|
|
|
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |