Jerry Pinto Quotes

Fight your genes.' The Big Hoom said to us once, to Susan and me. He did not explain. He did not know how to. But we knew what it meant. It meant that we were to march into the hall and take out our school books and reproduce the slipper-shaped animalcule whose psuedopodia power it through a world without feeling; to learn how to inscribe a hexagon into a circle without tearing the paper; to assimilate the causes and consequences of the battle of Panipat without ever identifying your own enemy because that would be mean identifying yourself.
'Fight your genes'. Focus. Be diligent. Concentrate. Do

I am no I. I am now part of a we.

If there was one thing I feared as I was growing up ...
No, that's stupid. I feared hundreds of things: the dark, the death of my father, the possibility that I might rejoice the death of my mother, sums involving vernier calipers, groups of schoolboys with nothing much to do, death by drowning.
But of all these, I feared the most the possibility that I might go mad too.

Dear Imelda, In accordance with your wishes, I did not imagine you smiling. I did not smile myself. But I am willing to take my chances. Your body is yours to give or not. Should you decide not, I will respect that, although I must warn you that I will work hard to reverse your decision. Let me say, though, that I find all the signs most encouraging. Shall we go forward then? Love, Augustine.

Was there a drain?'
'No. There was no drain. There isn't one even now'.

I wasn't sure I would ever be able to deal with the world. It seemed too big and demanding and there was no fixed syllabus.

You can cry in public as long as you don not sob. Tears are transparent. If you're walking fast, if the sun's too strong, no one notices. Sobs intrude. They push their way into people's consciousness. They feel duty-bound to ask what has happened.

It meant that we were to march into the hall and take out our school books and reproduce the slipper-shaped animalcule whose pseudopodia power it through a world without feeling; to learn how to inscribe a hexagon into a circle without tearing the paper; to assimilate the causes and consequences of the battle of Panipat without ever identifying your own enemy because that would mean identifying yourself.

One day I told him about the boys of the neighborhood, about their mocking.
He said, "That's because they don't understand."
"They should understand, I said. I didn't want to cry, but I was crying.
"If your mother had diabetes, what would they say?"
"I don't know."
"This is like diabetes. She's not well. That's all."
Was that what he told himself? That she was not well? That she might get better? I don't know.

Honestly.I don't understand Zen.It seems if you don't answer properly,or if you are rude,people get enlightened.

I wanted to understand her predicament because I was her son and I loved her with a helpless corroded love.

Gertrude was a veteran of the love wars.

She was in ward 33 again, lying in bed, a bed with a dark green sheet and a view of the outside. We could both see a man and woman getting out of a taxi. They were young and stood for a while, as if hesitating, in front of the hospital. Then the man took the woman's hand and they walked into the hospital and we lost them.

'That's why Indian women fall ill,' Em said. 'So that their husbands will hold their hands.

One thing,' he said. 'If you want to get people to talk to you, you should never interrupt.' 'Never? Even if I think something is wrong or missing?' 'Especially if you think something is wrong or missing.' 'Why?' 'Stops them. Gives them time to think. Interrupts the flow. If you want to get more, you shut up and wait.' And

But it seemed as if all psychiatric medicine was aimed only at the symptoms. Mute the paranoia. Calm the rage. Raise the endorphins. Underneath, the mysteries continued, unchanged. Underneath, somewhere in the chemistry of her brain, there was something that could not be reached.

Sometimes I would see myself as a book with bad binding. You know, like one more reader, one more face-down on the bed and I was going to spill everything, lose control

She grinned, a silty grin. 'You were my two dividends, yes? Don't you forget that.'
Then she sighed, took a deep breath, and said, 'But what an investment. My life.

A well-told lie can heal. Otherwise, what's fiction?

I didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they were civilized places. It made me happy there were people who sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote and there were other people who devoted their lives to making those words into books. It was lovely. Like standing in the middle of civilization.

Once I was told that living with me would mean being trapped and slowly asphyxiated.

He was a natural Protestant when I met him.", Em would say. "He protested everything.

She had forgotten, and the world was lying askew around

We began our hospital visits: one day Susan, one day me, everyday The Big Hoom. On one of these visits, she told me about the tap that opened at my birth and the lack drip filling her up, and it tore a hole in my heart. If this was what she could manage with a single sentence, what did thirsty years of marriage do to The Big Hoom?

Home was where others had to gather grace. Home was what I wanted to flee.

Because the sky is so high and the crow shat in your left eye. I could tell you a lie but I don't see why. The world is a game and the game is a tie. The tie is around your neck and they'll string you high.

There was something capricious about God. How could one expect perfect submission from those who are imperfect? How could one create desire and then expect everyone to pull the plug on it? And if God were capricious, then God was imperfect. If God were imperfect, God was not God.

What is it about the sea? Is it because it's there?

Marriage is all right. At least the person you're having a go at is an adult. But motherhood ... You're given something totally dependent, totally in love with you and it doesn't seem to come with a manual.