Mrig (মৃগ)

“You would have realized that it wasn't Mumtaz, a muslim, a friend of yours, but a human being you had killed. I mean, if he was a bastard, by killing him you wouldn't have killed the bastard in him; similarly, assuming that he was a Muslim, you wouldn't have killed his Muslimness, but him.”
― Saadat Hasan Manto, Toba Tek Singh: Stories

“Literature is a symptom of the state of a society”
― Saadat Hasan Manto

“ज़माने के जिस दौर से हम गुज़र रहे हैं, अगर आप उससे वाकिफ़ नहीं हैं तो मेरे अफसाने पढ़िये और अगर आप इन अफसानों को बरदाश्त नहीं कर सकते तो इसका मतलब है कि ज़माना नाक़ाबिले-बरदाश्त है। मेरी तहरीर(लेखन) में कोई नुक़्स नहीं । जिस नुक़्स को मेरे नाम से मनसूब किया जाता है, वह दरअसल मौजूदा निज़ाम का एक नुक़्स है। मैं हंगामा-पसन्द नहीं हूं और लोगों के ख्यालात में हैज़ान पैदा करना नहीं चाहता। मैं तहज़ीब, तमद्दुन, और सोसाइटी की चोली क्या उतारुंगा, जो है ही नंगी। मैं उसे कपड़े पहनाने की कोशिश भी नहीं करता, क्योंकि यह मेरा काम नहीं, दर्ज़ियों का काम है ।”
― Saadat Hasan Manto

“I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts…it is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us.”
― Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts