Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni > Quotes

“Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so, only I never knew it!”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified.
'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Each day has a color, a smell.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

“Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path—all they do is trip you up.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“There was an unexpected freedom in
finding out that one wasn't as important as one had always assumed!”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Aren't we all pawns in the hands of time, the greatest player of them all?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Because ultimately only the witness -- and not the actors -- knows the truth (Vyasa to Draupadi)”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“She who sows vengeance must reap its bloody fruit.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“A situation in itself,” he said, “is neither happy nor unhappy. It’s only your response to it that causes your sorrow.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single world. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Dussasan to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain.

But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end?

That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.

Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price.

But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you’ll wait forever.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

“A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.” I”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“time is the great eraser, both of sorrow and of joy.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Wisdom that isn't distilled in our own crucible can't help us.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

“I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy. I would use my strength instead to nurture my belief that my life would unfurl uniquely.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Everytime i have turned the page he re-enters my life as awkward as postscript”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“...this time I didn't launch into my usual tirade. Was it a memory of Krishna, the cool silence with which he countered disagreement, that stopped me? I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

“Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength --or else we die.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel . . . smelling of changes to come.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

“Monday is the day of silence, day of the whole white mung bean, which is sacred to the moon.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

“I guess there's a lot we hope for that never happens.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Sister of My Heart

“But maybe as I get older, I begin to see beauty where I least expected it before.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni