Ashok Ferrey > Quotes

“Grief to me is a dish best eaten alone, in a cold room.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel

“In Sri Lanka, the people you lived amongst, the people you went to school with, the people in whose houses you ate, whose jokes you shared: these were not the people you married. Quite possibly they were not your religion. More to the point they were probably not your caste. This word with its fearsome connotations was never, hardly ever used. But it was ever present: it muddied the waters of Sri Lanka's politics, it perfumed the air of her bed-chambers; it lurked, like a particularly noxious relative, behind the poruwa of every wedding ceremony. It was the c-word. People used its synonym, its acronym, its antonym-indeed any other nym that came to mind - in the vain hope its meaning would somehow go away. It didn't. But if the people you chose to associate with were the very ones you could not marry, then the ones you did marry were quite often people you wouldn't dream of associating with if you had any choice in the matter.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl

“They had lived down the road from each other as children. Everyday they walked home from school hand in hand; they were childhood sweethearts, they were bestfriends. And when they came of age, in the time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition they were given in marriage. To other people.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl

“In Sri Lanka, nothing succeeds like death-it is the ultimate validation. The man you hate in life becomes instantly your idol in death. Any neglected artist can take heart; reviled whilst alive, he only has to wait patiently for death to become the national hero he has always yearned to be.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel

“We are so obsessed with the quick clean end, the end that takes no longer than the length of a Hollywood film, that we have invented this word 'closure' for it-hoping that the truth of of this heroic compound will follow shortly after the naming of it. If the word exists, the concept must, mustn't it? But I will tell you differently. All that exists at the end is the sheer animal act of forgetting, and the act of forgiving ourselves for forgetting. It is a physical thing born of years of harrowing repetition and replay: the road so often travelled that the scenery is no longer visible, the paragraph so often read that the sense is no longer apparent.
- Sanjay de Silva”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel

“I think you'll come to realize, Sanjay, that it's a little too much to ask for in life. To find both love and like in the same equation.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel

“It's not what you are in life, but what you make of it”
― Ashok Ferrey, Colpetty People

“no one her in the Western world has time to spare, to sit and just be with anyone else, we drinking endless cups of tea. We were all victims of some invisible timetable ordering our every movement, governing our every step.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel

“When a man marries, he should take a good look at his mother-in-law first, to understand where life will take him.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl

“It was all part of the Eastern system of control and appropriation, Frankie reflected philosophically. The old controlled the young, the educated the uneducated, and as for the rich, well the rich had no doubt at all that they actually owned the poor.”
― Ashok Ferrey, Colpetty People

“This world, I have often thought, would be so much a better place if only we took the trouble to misunderstand our enemies a little, give them the benefit of our doubt. In my short life I have found it never does to look too closely into the minds of people: let their actions speak louder than their words. And their inactions loudest of all.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl

“We're all forced to lead many lives simultaneously. We do it out of necessity, not choice. We don't make a virtue of it.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Good Little Ceylonese Girl

“You only judge the quality of your life in retrospect, needing the wisdom of hindsight to assign comparative value. By then it is too damned late, because the days have slipped through your fingers. All you have left are memories, which you may tell over and over like the beads of an old woman's rosary, but they are only beads after all.”
― Ashok Ferrey, The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel