Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path, All they do is trip you up

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The dream is not a drug but a way. Listen to where it can take you.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people.... Fennel... smelling of changes to come.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Because ultimately only the witness — and not the actors — knows the truth (Vyasa to Draupadi)

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
They say in the old tales that when a man and woman exchange looks the way we did, their spirits mingle. their gaze is a rope of gold binding each other. even if they never meet again, they carry a little of the other with them always. they can never forget, and they can never be wholly happy again

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable—but I always was so, only I never knew it!

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Monday is the day of silence, day of the whole white mung bean, which is sacred to the moon.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
This time I didn't launch into my usual tirade. Was it a memory of Krishna, the cool silence with which he countered disagreement, that stopped me? I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India. 'Then how do you know if people appreciated what you did?' I'd asked. 'Do you really need to know?' my father had asked back.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The darkness is a cresting wave. It sweeps me up out of my body until I float among the stars, those tine bright pores on the sky's skin. If only I could pass through them, I would end up on the other side, the right side, shadowless, perfectly illuminated, beyond the worries of this mundane world

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you.... But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out. Day of suicide, day of murder.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Don't create snakes out of ropes. You have enough to worry about.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I tried to hold on to this compassion, sensing its preciousness, but even as I reached to grasp it, it dissipated into wisps. No revelation can endure unless it is bolstered by a calm pure mind- and I'm afraid I didn't possess that.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
In life, it's best not to take anything for free - unless it's from someone who wishes you well.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Looking back, I could not point to one special time and say, There! That's what is amazing. We can change completely and not recognize it. We think terrible events have made us into stone. But love slips in like a chisel - and suddenly it is an ax, breaking us into pieces from the inside.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Everyone breathes in air, but it's a wise person who knows when to use that air to speak and when to exhale in silence.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength —or else we die.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni