Sheba Karim > Quotes

“If any of this ended in an explosion, I hoped it would be one that made us burn brighter, stronger than ever before.”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“It's easy when you're climbing something. Don't look down, or even too far ahead. Focus on where you are in that moment.”
― Sheba Karim, That Thing We Call a Heart

“Imagine life as a journey, and you’re only allowed so many things in your backpack. What are you going to carry with you? Do the things you carry sustain you in some way?”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“If anyone heard us, I bet they understood, because one of life’s sad truths is that not all of us receive love but every single one of us knows pain.”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“They made a Bollywood movie about Mary Kom, the legendary Olympic boxer from Manipur, but instead of casting an actual Northeastern actor to play her, they cast Priyanka Chopra,” he explained.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Noreen wasn’t one for alcohol, or pot. In varying degrees, both brought her down, then pummeled her with dark thoughts—you’ll never write anything worthwhile and anyway your writing sucks, your mother could die, Adi Uncle could die, you could die, if you were funnier/smarter/prettier/a better writer maybe your father would want to know”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“More TV—do you know this show Gilmore Girls?”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“While in the South, it was hard not to view everything through the lens of history, even the sun.”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“So little of the world makes sense. It’s only that most people either construct a narrative in which it does or try to ignore it.”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“You were never clueless. I was so busy rebelling against my parents that it took me longer to grow up. You see how I still am with my folks. Your personality, your life, your circumstances . . . you may be of me, but you are not at all me.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“that when he asked her a question, he always waited for the answer.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“The truth doesn’t matter. I am screwed. If I even utter one word in my defense, those young, rabid feminists will eat me alive. Woh sab mujhko kha jaingi. What kind of generation is yours, that casts such a wide net and leaves no room for nuance? Tell me, who is vetting these anonymous posts? Don’t they understand that what they are doing can destroy a person’s life, his life’s work?”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“This was true. Where others might see coincidence or luck or everyday happenstance, Sonia Khala saw signs. If Ruby and Noreen protested that she was reading too much into it, she’d quote the Quran, the final word on the matter. Verily there are signs for those who reflect.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“She could swear like a Punjabi truck driver and was funny as hell—last time Noreen had hung out with her, she’d told a story about her first time using a squat toilet that had her rolling on the floor.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“do believe women! I am a feminist! I have been in the trenches, fighting this fight since I was a girl! How many young female artists have I mentored?” Meena retrieved the decanter from the bookshelf and poured a shot of whiskey into Inder’s glass, swirling it a few times before drinking it down. “You’re still a child, Kabir. You don’t know anything about the world.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“So every day there is puja in your house but no Quran. Do you even have Allah’s name written anywhere? Or now you rely on Ganesh to protect you?” “Sonia had Allah’s name in every room of her house, but it didn’t protect her, did it?” Ruby said.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Everything she read online said girls who felt unloved by their fathers went on to have shitty relationships with men as though it was a given.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Azra lay gazing at the ceiling, her hands folded over her stomach, feeling sorry for herself because while her elder daughter had followed the right path, her younger was a divorced single mother who’d always made foolish decisions, was making them still.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“It’s not as though his cup brimmeth with options,” Inder said, but Meena was looking past him.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“was ashamed, so I did what a lot of gay young men did back then, bury it deep and overcompensate. I dated Kavita, a smart, future doctor Indian girl from my community, I was part of the youth group at temple, I had a poster of Madhuri Dixit on my wall—”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“I have to take a big Frosty dump.” “I love it when you talk sexy.”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“Don’t worry,” Tara said. “We’ve never looked to America for moral high ground.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“He’s right. These conversations need to happen,” Camille said. “I’ll tell you, being a white woman in India can be très difficile. Men here assume white girls are easy. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been propositioned or touched. In order to make it happen less,”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“All the late nights and practice tests and extra-credit assignments and Amnesty International petitions and cross-country meets, all in service of College, those four years of transformative learning and personal growth, where she would take screenwriting classes and find forever friends like her mother had found Adi Uncle and travel and maybe even try improv because”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Eventually,” she said. “They can’t let your father’s actions define their life, prevent them from achieving happiness. And neither can you. You are not your dad, Kabir, like I’m not mine.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Itna stupid. Who would trust a man with that rule? And anyway, how many male artists have slept with their young assistants? It’s practically part of the job description.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Big Bertie’s sweet and tangy Hawaiian BBQ Sauce,” she said, caressing the bottle, “is guaranteed to get you lei’d”
― Sheba Karim, Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

“Pooja had explained that, in North India at least, heavy marijuana ingestion plus transgression meant blitzed men thinking they had carte blanche to harass and grope women.”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“Sometimes I think I’m attracted to ruins because I find the present so depressing. There’s so much hatred in India now, other places too. Sometimes I wonder if we’re one seismic event away from collapse. But I digress. Shall we enter the main palace?”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls

“You see the lives most women have here, how they’re treated by men; even money doesn’t save you from it, and imagine if you have none. You were their scapegoat for something beyond your control”
― Sheba Karim, The Marvelous Mirza Girls