jaanavi

“She looked like the nostalgia that settles in your ribs at the end of a story you have never read, yet nevertheless know.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“If you combed through enough fairy tales, untangled their roots, and shook out their branches, you would find that they are infested with oaths. Oaths are brittle things, not unlike an egg. Though they go by different names depending on the myth— troths and geis, vows and tynged— there is one thing they all share: they must be broken for there to be a story. Only a shattered promise yields a rich, glittering yolk of a tale.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“You warned me that knowing your secret would destroy us. At first, it sat in our marriage like a blue- lipped ghost, hardly noticeable until a trick of the light drew it into focus. But you could always tell the days when it gnawed at my thoughts. You tried to comfort me. You stroked my face and curled my fingers to your heart. You said: “If you pry, you’ll destroy our marriage.” But oh, my love, you lied.”
― Roshani Chokshi , The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“Victims can still be enemies.”
― James Islington, The Will of the Many