Gurukant Desai Quotes

Now I understand why you do not wish to marry. You have dedicated your life to others -- to your sick brother and your aged aunt and your little brother who will be dependent on you all his life. You have sacrificed your own life for them. ~ Anita Desai

Many characters in the novel are representative of types that exist in India. He represents the caste system in India with an air of superiority, the caste system in India and the people thinking that western things are better. ~ Anita Desai

I think for a few moments. Sometimes I think that the reason I'm not ambitious and I don't care about what my family cares about is that I'm lazy and....not all that smart. Dr. Desai gives me one of those get serious looks. ~ Francisco X. Stork

The vegetarian movement is an ancient movement and is not quite a modern one. ~ Morarji Desai

Now here was Saeed Saeed, and Biju's admiration for the man confounded him. Fate worked this way. Biju was overcome by the desire to be his friend, because Saeed Saeed wasn't drowning, he was bobbing in the tides. ~ Kiran Desai

What is this all about,' asked Sai, but her mouth couldn't address her ear in the tumult; her mind couldn't talk to her heart. 'Shame on myself,' she said ... Who was she ... she with her self-importance, her demand for happiness, yelling it at fate, at the deaf heavens, screaming for her joy to be brought forth..?
How dare ... How dare you not ...
Why shouldn't I have ... How dare ... I deserve ... Her small greedy soul ... Her tantrums and fits ... Her mean tears ... Her crying, enough for all the sadness in the world, was only for herself. Life wasn't single in its purpose ... or even its direction ... The simplicity of what she'd been taught wouldn't hold. Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it. ~ Kiran Desai

When you understand this hidden dimension of your humanity, you can empower yourself to accelerate your evolution. ~ Panache Desai

Therefore, vegetarianism alone can give us the quality of com-passion, which distinguishes man from the rest of the animal world. ~ Morarji Desai

Shame is the undercurrent that keeps you living in the belief that you are unworthy of all the bounty life has to offer. Somewhere along the way, we have internalized the belief that we are - in our deepest selves - defective and wrong. Shame is not a natural emotion. Babies aren't born feeling shame. We manufacture it within ourselves, as punishment for not adhering to the norms of society…Just for today, see what it feels like to open those clenched fists - that clenched heart - and receive every good thing ~ Panache Desai

Quick, nervy and jumpy -yet to the children she was as constant as a staff, a tree that can be counted on not to pull up its root and shift in the night. She was the tree that grew in the centre of their lives and in whose shade they lived. ~ Anita Desai

The more you replicate the spiritual practice of another, the more disconnected you become from your own power, potential and possibility ~ Panache Desai

You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. Sometimes someone came popping around a corner again, or on the subway then they vanished again. Addresses, phone numbers did not hold. The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore. ~ Kiran Desai

The Indian diaspora is a wonderful place to write from, and I am lucky to be part of it. ~ Kiran Desai

All of the third-world flights docked here, families waiting days for their connections, squatting on the floor in big bacterial clumps, and it was a long trek to where the European-North American travelers came and went, making those brisk, no-nonsense flights with extra leg-room and private TV, whizzing over for a single meeting in such a manner that it was truly hard to imagine they were shitting-peeing, bleeding-weeping humans at all. Silk and cashmere, bleached teeth, Prozac, laptops, and a sandwich for their lunch named the Milano. ~ Kiran Desai

With your lunch box, do not forget to carry courtesy, respect, and gratitude from home! ~ Rupali Desai

The lighter we are - the more we've dealt with everything inside us - the more we are able to bring into our lives abundance, health, love, and soulfulness. ~ Panache Desai

Do you know anyone who would - secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self - really prefer to return to childhood? ~ Anita Desai

Say goodbye to this energy of fear that kept you safe but small. ~ Panache Desai

Why couldn't she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else's life. ~ Kiran Desai

Biju knew he probably wouldn't see him again. This was what happened, he had learned by now. You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. Sometimes someone came popping around a corner again, or on the subway, then they vanished again. Adresses, phone numbers did not hold. The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore./The Inheritance of Loss ~ Kiran Desai

Looking a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept with sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost nobody would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able to eat such things where they were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn't afford them anymore. ~ Kiran Desai

it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed. ~ Kiran Desai

The moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being. ~ Anita Desai

No fruit dies so vile and offensive a death as the banana ... ~ Kiran Desai

I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges. ~ Anita Desai

She had been mistaken - she was only the center to herself, as always, and a small player playing her part in someone else's story. ~ Kiran Desai

I know you can't be mine, but I wish it happens. ~ Pavan Desai

From this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people's good. ~ Morarji Desai

Your experience on this planet is as unique as one of the billions of stars in the clear indigo sky, and yet I believe you and I are on the same journey - one in which the Essential Self is emerging into conscious experience, shifting out of separation and suffering into connection and bliss. ~ Panache Desai

The oak tree is firm and elegant and upright. The weeping willow has allowed the burdens of life to bend it. ~ Panache Desai

The publishing world is very timid. Readers are much braver. ~ Kiran Desai

Politics and friendships are like oil and water, you need a really good blender to make them work. ~ Kush Desai

showing off is always sweet when you have things worth showing off ~ Pavan Desai

We should propagate the values of vegetarianism. ~ Morarji Desai

Perhaps that's why they had been so happy to learn a new tongue in the first place : the self consciousness of it, the effort of it, the grammar of it, pulled you up; a new language provided distance and kept the heart intact. ~ Kiran Desai

All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the night, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.
Sai, sitting on the veranda, was reading an article about giant squid in an old National Geographic. Every now and then she looked up at Kanchenjunga, observed its wizard phosphorescence with a shiver. The judge sat at the far corner with his chessboard, playing against himself. Stuffed under his chair where she felt safe was Mutt the dog, snoring gently in her sleep. A single bald lightbulb dangled on a wire above. It was cold, but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, contained by stone walls several feet deep. ~ Kiran Desai

You must live every moment of your life in such a way that if you had to live it over and over again till infinity, this would be a good thing. ~ Tanuja Desai Hidier

But so fluid a thing was love.It wasn't firm,he was learning, it wasn't a scripture;it was a wobbliness that lent itself to betrayal,taking the mold of whatever he poured he poured it into.And in fact,it was difficult to keep from pouring it into numerous vessels.It could be used for all kinds of purposes ... He wished it were a constraint.It was truly beginning to frighten him. ~ Kiran Desai

You being you is the blessing. You being you is the miracle. You being you is enough. You being you is your soul signature. ~ Panache Desai

I would, therefore, say that for no reason whatsoever, except in self-defence, should one think of killing any animal. ~ Morarji Desai

No one, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come. ~ Rudrajeet Desai

I do not say that one who is vegetarian is full of compassion and one who is not, is otherwise. We sometimes find people, who are vegetarians, are very bad people. ~ Morarji Desai

As an index of social change, perhaps we should follow the popularity of the slap as some sort of measure of our belief in social hierarchy. The slap carries with it all the accumulated power of the past; it uses an entire social class as its accompanying army. As we relate to each other as individuals not necessarily embedded in our respective hierarchies, perhaps we will punch each other more frequently. In some truly ironic way, that might be good news. ~ Santosh Desai

And it now occurred to me that maybe the whole point was, in fact, to lose yourself. But not in the sense of confusion
in the sense of connection to something bigger than yourself ... Getting lost to be found. ~ Tanuja Desai Hidier

A man wasn't equal to an animal, not one particle of him. Human life was stinking corrupt, and meanwhile there were beautiful creatures who lived with delicacy on the earth without doing anyone harm. "We should be dying." the judge almost wept. ~ Kiran Desai

There are moments in each of our lives when something greater - something Incontrovertible - steps in to help us realign with our truest lives and most authentic selves. This perceived crisis or trauma either shakes our world to its core or tears everything apart so that we are launched once again in the direction of our best lives, the most authentic expression of who we are each here to be. ~ Panache Desai

Only their efforts to make him talk failed. he would say one word at a time, if pressed, but seemed happier not to and could not be made to repeat a whole line. Gradually, as his family learnt how to anticipate his few needs and how to respond, they ceased to notice his silence -his manner of communication seemed full and rich enough to them: he no more needed to converse than Aunt Mira's cat did. ~ Anita Desai

Her eyes opened at this sight against her will and she looked around the room almost in fear. But it was dark and shadowy, shaded by the bamboo screen at the door, the damp rush mats at the windows, the old heavy curtains and the spotted, peeling walls, and in their shade she saw how she loved him, loved Raja and Tara and all of them who had lived in this house with her. There could be no love more deep and full and wide than this one, she knew. No other love had started so far back in time and had had so much time in which to grow and spread. They were really all parts of her, inseparable, so many aspects of her as she was of them, so that the anger or the disappointment she felt in them was only the anger and disappointment she felt at herself. Whatever hurt they felt, she felt. Whatever diminished them, diminished her. What attacked them, attacked her. Nor was there anyone else on earth whom she was willing to forgive more readily or completely, or defend more instinctively and instantly. She could hardly believe, at that moment, that she would Iive on after they did or they would continue after she had ended. If such an unimaginable phenomenon could take place, then surely they would remain flawed, damaged for life. The wholeness of the pattern, its perfection, would be gone.
She lay absolutely still, almost ceasing to breathe, afraid to diminish by even a breath the wholeness of that love. ~ Anita Desai