Quotes by Bharati Mukherjee - Page 1

Dullness is a kind of luxury.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Dullness
Kind
Luxury
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What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Teacher
Inspire
Teaching
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[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Agendas
Exotic
Writing
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The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Home
Feels
Traveler
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A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Farmers
Farming
Modesty
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Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one's individuality.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Individuality
Mind
Roots
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I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Appreciate
Qualities
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What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Poetry
Children
Mind
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Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Fiction
Mainstream
Reader
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In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Drivers
Inattention
India
Jeopardize
Real
Consequences
Spot
Pedestrian
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Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just 'The Other.'
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Human Beings
Mainstream
Complex
Readers
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I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, 'Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individuals.'
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Individuals
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I thought of America as Natalie Wood and Bob Wagner sprawled on the edge of a Hollywood swimming pool biting into the same red apple.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Biting
Pool
Red
Swimming
Swimming Pool
Wagner
Apple
Edge
Natalie
Wood
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I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Different
Empowered
Filters
Light
Belong
Different Kind
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I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Government
Citizens
Mean
Prove
Citizen
Unlike
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I don't feel the depression the people who are always looking back to the '50s, to 'Father Knows Best' feel. I can see the coming of another glorious era.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Glorious
Looking Back
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My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it's just continuous overload.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Definitions
Littles
Madness
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I am aware of myself as a four-hundred-year-old woman, born in the captivity of a colonial, pre-industrial oral culture and living now as a contemporary New Yorker.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Captivity
Four
Years
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The United States exists as a sovereign nation. 'America,' in contrast, exists as a myth of democracy and equal opportunity to live by, or as an ideal goal to reach.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Contrast
Equal
Equal Opportunity
Myth
Sovereign
Exists
Ideal
Sovereign Nation
To Live By
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We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It's a question of time, not motive.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Motive
Our Time
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Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Running
Anarchy
Bengali
Growing Up
School
Hindu
Convent
Stern
Irish
Nuns
Revere
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In other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Agendas
America
Doe
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I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Dream
America
Asian American
Citizens
Race
Rejection
Treachery
Deliver
Equally
Promises
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My first novel, 'The Tiger's Daughter,' embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man's land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Daughter
Acknowledge
Country
Land
Loneliness
Mother
Novel
Between
Continent
Could
Embodies
Present
Tiger
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There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Audience
Book
Fiction
Indian
Regard
Wheat
White
Writer
Brought
Conceive
Germ
North
North American
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I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Canada
Commitment
Emotional
Indian
Roots
Commitments
Stay
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But, Christ, there's a difference between exotic and foreign, isn't there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Believe
Mean
Real
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I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It's about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Chaos
Cosmic
Energy
Father
Father Figure
Individual
Moved
Physics
Quantum
Quantum Physics
Soul
Theory
Tradition
Inside
Hindu
Figure
Sense
Spark
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You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa City from Calcutta that suddenly I could be a new person . . . What America offers me is romanticism and hope . . . Suddenly, I found myself in a country where
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Cities
Country
Iowa
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Lepers were a common sight all over India and in every part of Calcutta, but extending help beyond dropping a coin or two into their rag-wrapped stumps was not. As a child I was convinced even touching a spot a leper had rubbed against would lead to infection.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Dropping
Extending
Infection
Leper
Sight
Coin
Spot
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I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of television. I'm constantly bombarded by information - Somalia one second, Haiti the next - I need that constant pounding. I couldn't write without television. I need to have the world in my room.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Bombarded
Cnn
Constant
Haiti
Range
Somalia
Pounding
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I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Wedding
Coffee
Courtship
Daddy
Father
Iowa
Lunch
By The Time
Student
Fellow
Mrs
Shop
Sent
Workshop
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Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more than a century. They resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world 'another Calcutta.'
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Attachment
Celebrate
Cities
Dying
Dysfunction
Equal
Ferocity
Labels
Resent
Civic
Reflex
Stereotyping
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My mother's rules had to do with feminine deportment, so I never played hard enough to break a toy or muddy my dress. My father's rules had to do with never shaming the family by even a hint of scandal, and not providing business rivals with an opportunity to kidnap me or throw acid in my face.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Acid
Feminine
Muddy
Providing
Rivals
Scandal
Family Business Mother
Hint
Throw
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In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at all desirable. They are trouble. And a mother who, as mine did, has three daughters, no sons, is supposed to go and hang herself, kill herself, because it is such an unlucky kind of motherhood to have.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Daughter
Desirable
Mother
Motherhood
Son
Unlucky
Daughters
Hindu
Hang
Herself
Societies
Patriarchal
Sons
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As a bookish child in Calcutta, I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of happiness swept them outside the bounds of social decency. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina lived large in my imagination. The naughty girls of Hollywood films flirted and knew how to drive.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Anna
Bounds
Decency
Naughty
Pursuit
Pursuit Of Happiness
Thrill
Adventures
Bad Girls
Swept
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The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Childhood
Mother
Two
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The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably we'd picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Freak
Gravel
Indian
Path
Red
Tow
Nuns
One Or Two
Opinions
Picked
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Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless. In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Mother
Taken
Winning
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I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money. You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted... I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Notebook
Couple
Growing Up
Guarded
Pencils
School
Bodyguards
Handled
Walked
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Mother Teresa's detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans' destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless. In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Accused
Achievement
Causes
Battles
Context
Criticisms
Overall
Topple
Undermine
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I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Home
Father
Writing
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I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Creative Writing
Flew
Iowa
Selected
Airport
Home Me Night
Carry
Commands
Marry
Home Father Me
Studying
Surrounded
Workshop
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In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The neighborhood I'd grown up in was homogeneously Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didn't expect myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my own goals and taking charge of my future.
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Daughter
Disappoint
Father
Mother
Neighborhood
Setting
Traditional
Future Men Women
Hindu
Charge
Disobey
Future Women Men
Grown
Ours
Provided
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One of the early tip-offs to me about the enormous changes that were going on with being in a Bangalore house, home, where the young woman from a nearby village, who had been hired to baby sit newborn twins, suddenly said after two weeks of work: 'I'm sorry, this is too much work, I'm going to try applying for call center jobs. The pay is better.'
Bharati Mukherjee / Writer
Jobs
Baby
Sorry
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Bharati Mukherjee Quotes - Page 1

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