Aditya Vijaykumar > Aditya's Quotes

“I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.”
― Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet

“Had Shastri been given another five years, there would have been no Nehru–Gandhi dynasty. Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi would almost certainly still be alive, and in private life. The former would be a (failed) entrepreneur, the latter a recently retired airline pilot with a passion for photography. Finally, had Shastri lived longer, Sonia Gandhi would still be a devoted and loving housewife, and Rahul Gandhi perhaps a middle-level manager in a private sector company.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Patriots & Partisans

“One can forgive but one should never forget.”
― Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

“Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.”
― Roald Dahl, The BFG

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“No matter what the delusions are, parents do not really know their children”
― Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People

“My love, I feel terrible without you. It is like being with you.”
― Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness Of Other People

“It affects him, the great arrogance of the Equilateral Triangle, the failed aspiration of the octagon to be a circle, the eternal suffocation of the denominator that has to bear the weight of the unjust numerator, the loneliness of Pluto. And the smallness of Mercury, always a mere dot next to a yellow sun. In this world, there is no respect for Mercury.”
― Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness Of Other People

“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

“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

“God save us from people who mean well.”
― Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink”
― Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“What did I learn that day in the sabha?
All this time I'd believed in my power over my husbands. I'd believed that because they loved me they would do anything for me. But now I saw that though they did love me—as much perhaps as any man can love—there were other things they loved more. Their notions of honor, of loyalty toward each other, of reputation were more important to them than my suffering. They would avenge me later, yes, but only when they felt the circumstances would bring them heroic fame. A woman doesn't think that way. I would have thrown myself forward to save them if it had been in my power that day. I wouldn't have cared what anyone thought. The choice they made in the moment of my need changed something in our relationship. I no longer depended on them so completely in the future. And when I took care to guard myself from hurt, it was as much from them as from our enemies”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“we cannot force ourselves to love—or to withhold it. At best, we can curb our actions. The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

“On my way out, I stopped again at Boloor's house to thank him. He was leaving home as well, and as we walked to the gate together, I filled his ears with praise of Shailaja's fish curry. 'Really, that good, was it?' Boloor asked. 'But then, I wouldn't know,' he continued, this stalwart president of the Mogaveera Vyavasthpaka Mandali and secretary of the Akhila Karnataka Fishermen's Parishad, of the National Fishworkers' Federation and of the Coastal Karnataka Fishermen Action Committee. ' You see, I don't eat fish.”
― Samanth Subramanian, Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast

“it’s not we who control money, it’s the money that controls us. When there’s only a little, it behaves meekly; when it grows, it becomes brash and has its way with us.”
― Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

“Language communicates in terms of what is already know; it chokes up when asked to deal with entirely unprecedented.”
― Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

“On that day I became convinced that it is the words of women that deeply wound other women.”
― Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

“Words, after all, are nothing by themselves. They burst into meaning only in the minds they’ve entered.”
― Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

“The well-being of any household rests on selective acts of blindness and deafness.”
― Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

“I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest