Shashi Deshpande > Quotes

“A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.”
― Shashi Deshpande

“Women without men, I realized then, are totally different creatures.”
― Shashi Deshpande, Small Remedies

“Marriage is a very strange thing. It’s a very public institution, it’s meant to tell the world that two people are going to live together, to declare that their children will be legal, that these children can inherit their property. It’s meant for social living, to ensure that some rules are observed, so that men and women don’t cross the lines drawn from them. At the same time, marriage is an intensely private affair, no outsider will know the state of some one else’s marriage. It’s a closed room, a locked room…”
― Shashi Deshpande

“Things can never be as they were. It's astonishing how we comment on change, as if change is something remarkable. On the contrary, not to change is unnatural, against nature.”
― Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence

“To overcome your fear of death, you have to move from ‘the world ends with me’ to ‘the world goes on without me’. It is a great leap, the biggest step a human can take.”
― Shashi Deshpande, In the Country of Deceit

“Surely there comes a moment in every human's life when he or she says, like the Sibyl - I wish to die.”
― Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence

“It's not just that life is cruel, but that in the very process of our birth we submit to life's cruelty”
― Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence

“Was’ and ‘is’ – in English there is very little difference between these two words. Only one letter more , just two letters different. But it is a lifetime, it is a world of difference. Time does not allow you to take the past along with you. Nothing remains unchanged. Love gets diluted, hate is forgotten and friendship and enmity keep shifting all the time. One day, when you look back, you will ask yourself – what was it all about.”
― Shashi Deshpande, In the Country of Deceit

“I know that safety is always unattainable. You're never safe.”
― Shashi Deshpande

“A woman can never be angry; she can only be neurotic, hysterical, frustrated.”
― Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence

“I have often watched in fascination the leaps and bounds of her mind as, starting from the banks of uncomfortable facts, she reaches the safety of easier-tolive-with invention.”
― Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence

“And then, as we grew into young women, we realised it was not love, but marriage that was the destiny waiting for us.”
― Shashi Deshpande, That Long Silence