Abir Mukherjee > Quotes

“We could only control India through force of arms, but force was useless against a people who didn’t fight back; because you couldn’t kill people like that without killing a part of yourself too.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“I’m not exactly a patient man these days, my full measure of restraint having been expended sitting in a trench for several years acting as target practice for German artillery.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“Abominable business this MacAuley affair,’ said Peters to no one in particular. ‘Absolutely dreadful,’ tutted Mrs Tebbit. ‘It makes you wonder if any of us are safe in our beds.’ I could have pointed out that MacAuley hadn’t been murdered in his bed, but five miles away in an alley behind a whore house.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“You’re no use to me dead.’ ‘Yes, sir. I’d not wish to cause you any inconvenience, sir.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“I hated this new breed of pacifist Indian revolutionary. So often they acted like we were all just good friends who happened to disagree about something, and that once the issue was resolved – obviously in their favour – we’d go back to taking tea and being the best of chums. It made punching them in the face morally difficult.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“He was a kind man, and if there was one thing the war had taught me, it was that when you meet such a person, the sensible thing to do is to take advantage of them as much as possible, for you never know when you’ll come across such a gift-horse again.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“Some men are put off by intelligence in a woman. I find it intoxicating.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“Some of them, those who followed the Jain religion, even wandered about with masks over their mouths, lest they accidentally inhale and kill an insect. There was no reasoning with such people.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Death in the East

“A man must live by his own conscience, not his father's.”
― Abir Mukherjee, The Shadows of Men

“cricket, a game so insipid and with rules so arcane that it took five full days to play it properly and which even then, more often than not, ended in a draw?”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“the sense of absurdity hit me: these men, born into bondage, seemed to bear no personal ill will towards me, a representative of the authority that made them second-class citizens in their own land.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“... but I got the feeling that in Dawson’s case, saving his life only
made him resent me more. Not that I cared. To me it didn’t
matter if it was Dawson, Kaiser Wilhelm or even the Devil
himself who’d been lying wounded in the room. I have gone
back for anyone, because you don’t leave a man to the gas.”
― Abir Mukherjee

“God forbid the prince should meet an actual Indian on his tour of the country.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“there was precious little justice to be found in this world, and anything I could do to further its ends was probably a good thing.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Necessary Evil

“If you thought about it, that probably made Queen Victoria the greatest drug peddler in history.”
― Abir Mukherjee

“A more sensible man might have kept quiet, but me – I preferred to give voice to my ignorance.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“I'd never been one to give up on lost causes, maybe because I was one myself.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“Daylight robbery,’ he puffed, passing me the note. I took the money and his case and made for the station concourse, all the while noting that when an Indian overcharges an Englishman, it is termed fraud, but when an Englishman overcharges an Indian, it’s called capitalism.”
― Abir Mukherjee, The Shadows of Men

“When an Indian overcharges a Britisher, it is fraud. When a Britisher overcharges an Indian, it is capitalism.”
― Abir Mukherjee, The Shadows of Men

“there was probably more chance of the good Lord himself deciding to smite MacAuley with a bolt of lightning for a bit of a laugh. In my experience, the Almighty could be capricious like that.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“I needed to make sense of it all, and whisky generally helped.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Rising Man

“we bicker like bald men fighting over a comb.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Necessary Evil

“And we British considered ourselves a moral people. What else was the vaunted British sense of fair play but a manifestation of our morality?”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“And in the expression on the constable’s face, I saw the future. This struggle we were engaged in — this battle to keep India British — was one we were destined to lose. If even our own men treated the enemy as saints, then what chance did we stand?”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“What else was the vaunted British sense of fair play but a manifestation of our morality? Gandhi and Das's genius was that they realised that better than we did ourselves. They recognised that when it came down to it, the British and the Indians weren't that different, and the way to beat us was to appeal to our better natures — to make us comprehend the moral incongruity of our position in India.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“emancipation that comes from being part of the mob.”
― Abir Mukherjee, A Necessary Evil

“of”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“the kind of photographs that were popular during the war – mementos of a shared camaraderie; but more importantly in a time when death was indiscriminate and sudden, they were a record, in the event that the worst should happen, that you had actually lived – that you were more than just a name carved on a memorial to the fallen.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“We'd arrested him for making a speech seeking equality, and thrown him in a makeshift prison camp, open to the elements on one of the coldest nights of the year, and here he was inviting us in for a cup of tea. It was hard to dislike the man, let alone classify him as a mortal foe.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“otherwise,”
― Abir Mukherjee, The Burning Grounds