Blessy Samjose > Recent Status Updates

“So often, to see is to know. Understanding how we see, therefore, is to understand ourselves.“

"Sometimes you need to lose yourself to find yourself"

“You’re okay, you’re okay.”
“I believe this is a thing that humans do: Trying to speak words into existence. Trying to change very clearly what is in front of them.”

Only a cat can say this so eloquently 🤭
“I‘ve come to believe that veterinarians exist for two purposes: first to treat the sick and the injured, and second, so that humans can keep a watchful eye on every species, so none can rise above them.”

Rule #39
“While the parts change, the whole always remains the same … In this way not only does nothing remain the same but also nothing ever really changes.”

“You see, Ella, all I can give you is the present moment. That is all I have. But the truth is, no one has more than that. It is just that we like to pretend we do.”

“Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven’t loved enough.”

“What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.”

“Love cannot be explained. It can only be experienced.
Love cannot be explained, yet it explains all.”

“How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.”

“Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you’re responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”

“If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved.”

“While you learn to cook, your soul will simmer” 🤭

“A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all he has been denied.”

“A little magic. A talent for taking a beating. A demon at her side. That was all she had. That was all she needed.”

“The devil knows your name now, Galaxy Stern.”

“We do what we have to do,” Alex said. “That’s the only job of a survivor.”

“You always looked like you had trouble chasing you”
“So?”
“Now you look like it caught up.”

“Only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you”

“The greatest gift Lethe had given Alex was not the full ride to Yale […] It was the knowledge, the certainty, that the things she saw were real and always had been.”

“To each his own way and his own prayer. God does not take us at our word. He looks deep into our hearts. It is not the ceremonies or rituals that make a difference, but whether our hearts are sufficiently pure or not.“

“Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart”

It’s compelling.
Like you can’t leave alone a scab.
Like you need to know what happens next.

“For in hot countries people are almost all violent and passionate”
lol.

Chilling and compelling - at the same time.
Like when you know there are right and wrong sides to driving and are knowingly driving on the wrong side.
And you furtively wonder if anyone else has noticed that you are in error.

"The colonial era is over. And yet, residual problems [...] the result of untidy departures by colonial power, still remain dangerously stalemated [...] chronic hostility between India and Pakistan [...] is the most obvious example [,,,] making the imperial era compellingly current once more."

I came to this book for the romance. But then I grew to appreciate birdwatching. It looks like I will be leaving the book [unread] because of the romance 🤷🏻‍♀️

“… the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.”

“… the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.”

“As we have seen, English histories and theoretical constructs of India not only promoted divide et impera by inventing the religious ‘periodization’ of the Indian past, but portrayed a nation waiting for the civilizing advent of British rule.”