Vaddey Ratner > Quotes

“words, you see," he said, looking at me again, "allow us to make permanent what is essentially transient.Turn a world filled with injustice and hurt into a place that is beautiful and lyrical.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Knowing comes from learning, finding from seeking.”
― Vaddey Ratner

“I told you stories to give you wings, Raami, so that you would never be trapped by anything-your name, your title, the limits of your body, this world's suffering”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“We are all echoes of one another, Raami”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“I thought maybe we mourned not only for the dead but also for the living. We felt their absence before we knew for sure they were gone.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“You can dig a hole in my heart and bury all your sadness. I'll be your grave.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“A story, I had learned, through my own constant knitting and reknitting of remembered words, can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world, we begin to understand what we only intuited in our naivete-that while all else may vanish, love is our one eternity.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Turn your tongue seven times before speaking. This way you'll have time to think if you ought to say the things you want to say.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Often I lose myself in the constellation of my own ideas, forever searching for point of illumination. But no matter where I look, I find you, shinning and bright, offering me what ever it is I seek, you are my one single star. My sun, my moon, my guide and direction, I know as long as I have you, I'll never lose my way. Even if I can not touch you, I know I will see you, feel you, from anywhere. If I need you I know where to find you”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Lightning struck, the sky roared, and the night cried a giant's tears, thunderous and inconsolable.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Absence is worse than death. If you suddenly disappeared without a trace, it's like you had never lived.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“For all the loss and tragedy I have known, my life has taught me that the human spirit like the lifted hands of the blind, will rise above chaos and destruction, as wings in flight”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Life is like that." papa turned once again to the Mekong. "Everything is connected, and sometimes we, like little fishes, are awept up in these big and powerful currents. Carried far from home...”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Always somewhere there was light, and, though transient, it flashed all the more brilliantly because of the surrounding dark.”
― Vaddey Ratner

“Absence is worse than death.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“...it was enough that I knew I was not alone, that, at the very least, standing here beside me was this one person, who, unbeknownst to me till now, had all along been journeying this same journey with me, only from the opposite direction.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Poetry is like...first all you have is...
A line weaving through your mind
Like the tail of a child's kite
Unfettered by reason or rhyme.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Animals are not like people. If you leave them alone, they won't hurt you. But people will, even if you've done no wrong. They hurt you with their guns, their words, their lies and broken promises, their sorrow.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Once I believed I would live forever. Death never entered my mind. Then one day, death surprised me!”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“No matter what ugliness and destruction you may witness around you, I want you always to believe that the tiniest glimpse of beauty here and there is a reflection of the gods' abode.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“If the river brought us here," I ventured tentatively, "then when it reverses course, it'll carry us back.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“The problem with being seven-I remember myself at that age-is that you're aware of so much, and yet you understand so little. So you imagine the worst”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Truth, she believed, lies in what is said as much as in what isn't, in the same way that a melody not only is a sequence of audible notes but encompasses the spaces and pauses in between. When listening to music, you must learn to take in even the atmosphere of an echo.”
― Vaddey Ratner, Music of the Ghosts

“When you love a flower", he said, as if wishing to explain his altered experience, "and suddenly she is gone, everything vanishes with her. I lived because she lived. Now she is gone. Without her, I am nothing.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Perhaps it's natural for a father, for every parent, to see in his child all that's unspoiled and good.”
― Vaddey Ratner

“Your grief will fade.......It's hard to believe this now, my friend......but it will wither and, like a flower, leave behind always a seed of possibility.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“If you pay close enough attention, Raami, you'll realize that a single leaf can contain myriad lives imitating our own, and you'll know that there are always others traveling this world with you.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“There is no greater humiliation than hunger.”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“the problem with being seven is that you're aware of so much and yet you understand so little”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan

“Love hides in all sorts of places, in the most sorrowful corner of your heart, in the darkest and most hopeless situation”
― Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan