Parini Shroff > Quotes

“Women were built to endure the rules men make.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Wasn't sanity like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“This was the version of her who had survived and there was no sense in apologizing for being a survivor.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Well, I don't have the joys of motherhood," Geeta said after the women were emptied of excuses. Her voice was patient, but her smile was feral. "But I do have the joys of sleep and money.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“But you also can’t be a doormat. So you must exercise kindness and judgment. Not everyone will deserve your kindness. When they show you they’re not worthy, believe them.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“The amount of bullshit that fell from that fucker’s mouth could fertilize half of India.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Men like him would always look at her and see the things they were glad they weren't: weak, small, timid, powerless. Let them. She'd expended so much energy vying for a broken seat at an uneven table.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“The unfortunate status quo is that it is tough for women everywhere, and female friendships are what will carry us through the darkness and absurdity of life. Such connections, however, are not always easily forged in a world keen to divide, mark, and label as “other.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“For me, fiction is when research meets compassion; I believe this is often why facts don't change people's minds, but stories do.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“She resented being put in a position where those were her choices: violence or violation. She didn’t want to be built to endure, a long-suffering saint tossed by the whims of men. She wanted, for once, not to be handed the short end of the stick by a system that expected gratitude in return.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“She wasn't respected here, but she was feared, and fear had been very kind to Geeta.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Why was I so busy protecting the copper I had with you, that I destroyed the gold I had with her?”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Wounds from one battle prepare you for the other”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Exactly, we’re a bunch of housewives. We make your food, we watch your children, we hear your business. We know your lives well enough to ruin them. So I’d be careful.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“forgiveness doesn’t mean I’m right back where I started.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“never send a god to do a goddess’s job.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Yeah, sure, parental love is primitive, but the love that commits to the sacrifices, that puts their happiness and needs over mine, that does it daily on repeat—that’s a choice.” He squinted in the way Geeta now knew he did while thinking. Words came faster to him when he closed his eyes. “It’s a choice I make. It’s important, for me at least, to recognize that, because when you don’t, resentment creeps in.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“But I think that she was capable of anything because everything had already happened to her. She was fearless because she'd already suffered what the rest of us live in fear of.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“But from the get-go, they trained boys not to apologize and women to not expect it of them, to instead mutate pain into an art form.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Well, hindsight is almost a bigger bitch than you.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“If the natural world afforded them no protection, then a supernatural story might. A way of terrifying men into considering a woman's well-being from time to time.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“If you stay in this village, I will make sure you die.”
Khushi nodded. “We all will.”
“We’re happy to be accessories. Like jewelry, but way more dangerous,”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“She loved him no longer, it was true, but often the memory of love was more powerful than the love itself. For a short while that had felt like a long while, he'd been her world. But her world was bigger now.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Anyone could sympathize with that scenario—a woman who couldn’t be, in their view, a woman. It was easier to throw pity than to wrap their minds around a woman who preferred it that way. But to Geeta, the actual saddest thing, the real waste, was a woman with children she didn’t want.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“He broke the contract first. When someone threatens your body, you have every right to protect yourself.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“I guess intentions are what matter. Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to do the wrong thing first.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“Geeta suddenly wanted to tell her to retain some pride. To withhold parts of herself because there were plenty of people like her husband waiting to pilfer what they could. It was unlike Geeta, not only to intrude in others’ affairs, but also to offer advice. Advice was a cousin of caring; apathy was Geeta’s mantra.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“The woman ran a business, she alone fed her kids and paid for her daughter's dowry and the wedding to which she'd been denied entry. It was, Geeta felt, just another example of women living within the spaces that others defined.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“It’s a choice I make. It’s important, for me at least, to recognize that, because when you don’t, resentment creeps in.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens

“There was a Geeta before Ramesh’s hands had found her, and that Geeta was still alive, and even if no one else was interested in knowing her, Geeta was.”
― Parini Shroff, The Bandit Queens