Risha > Risha's Quotes

“A reputation is all it takes to spread fear. And fear is a mighty weapon.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“I was looking for the key for years
But the door was always open”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.”
― Aravind Adiga , The White Tiger

“Go to Old Delhi,and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundred of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with humans in this country.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like the one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep--all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“The trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“Go to the tea shop anywhere along the Ganga, sir, and look at the men working in that tea shop - men, I say, but better to call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, crushed humans in crushed uniforms, sluggish, unshaven, in their thirties or forties or fifties but still "boys." But that is your fate if you do your job well - with honesty, dedication, and sincerity, the way Gandhi would have done it, no doubt.”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“We don't have to stop living because we might die.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Every lemon will bring forth a child, and the lemons will never die out.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Do you see the colours, Salama?' Kenan whispers.

The sunset is gorgeous, but it pales in comparison to him. He's drenched in the dying day's glow, a kaleidoscope of shades dancing on his face. Pink, orange, yellow, purple, red. Finally settling into an azure blue. It reminds me of Layla's painting. A colour so stark it would stain my fingers were I to touch it.

As the sun sinks, in those few precious moments when the world is caught between day and night, something shifts between Kenan and me. 'Yes,' I breathe. 'Yes.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“It reminds me that as long as the lemon trees grow, hope will never die.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Might. What a word. It holds infinite possibilities of a life that could have been. So many options stacked one on top of the other, like cards waiting for a player to pick and choose.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“With all the destruction happening down there, it's so easy to forget the beauty that's up here. The sky is so beautiful after rainfall.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Salama, you've done everything. The rest is up to God. To fate. If you're meant to be in Munich, you will be, even if the whole military rips this place apart. And if you're not, then not even a private plane landing in the middle of Freedom Square to whisk you away will do that.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Bury me before I bury you" I did.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Death is an excellent teacher.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Just on the other side, safety- not freedom. I'm leaving freedom behind, and I can feel the earth's grief when I get out of the car. The tired weeds try to encircle my ankles. begging me to stay. They murmur stories about my ancestors. The ones who stood right where I stand. The ones whose discoveries and civilization encompassed the whole world. The one whose blood runs through my veins. My footprints sink deep into the soil where theirs have long since been washed away. They plead with me: It's your country. This earth belongs to me and my children.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“This is the land of your father, and his father before him. Your history is embedded in this soil. No country in the world will love you as yours does.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Fear is a cruel thing. The way it distorts thoughts, transforming them from molehills into mountains.”
― Zoulfa Katouh, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

“Pain doesn’t get easier. You just have to get stronger.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“Find the light that makes your lantern shine,” she used to say. “Hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“Fear is just a game, Shiori, I reminded myself. You win by playing.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“I would tell you stories from dawn to dusk if it meant filling your eyes with happiness.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“If fate is a bunch of strings, then I'll carry scissors. My choices are my own. I'll make them as I please.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“Food feeds the belly, thoughts feed the mind, but love is what feeds the heart.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“Learn from my mistakes, [...] and learn from my joys. Surround yourself with those who'll love you always, through your mistakes and your faults. Make a family that will find you more beautiful every day, even when your hair is white with age. Be the light that makes someone's lantern shine.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes