Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think writers from both East and West have long been fascinated by the ancient tales and the opportunity to reinterpret them.
To achieve important things, we have to sacrifice what's important to us. That's an idea that's very central to Indian thinking.
Sometimes -- she knows this from her own life -- to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.
Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel . . . smelling of changes to come.
Often, writer's block will occur when I don't understand a character or his/her motivations. So I will make notes analysing characters.
India has been a very accepting culture. We pride ourselves on that. That is a global truth. In fact, it forms a major theme in my books.
My grandfather was a very strong personality. He certainly ruled his household with an iron fist, even though it was often gloved in velvet!
Two great and terrible truths of war are these: War is easy to enter into, but difficult to end. And ultimately, in war there are no winners.
I think, we all learned that when we are afraid it's easy to want to blame, and the people we want to blame are the people who don't look like us.
Immigration was a huge force in changing my outlook. I moved to America 30 years ago. I had to reassess my beliefs, especially about women's roles.
I started writing after the death of my grandfather - memories, poems, etc. It was very personal; for years I did not share my writing with anyone.
I write best late at night, when everyone in the house has gone to bed. There's something magical about that late night silence that appeals to me.
By the time we're adults, our ideas have solidified. So I wanted to write for a younger audience, who would perhaps love heroes from other cultures.
As a writer, I have to show complexities. Through my writings, I hope to bring out people in different situations and not just one-dimensional beings.
In many immigrant families, the parents are just talking and talking about the home country until the children are like, 'Oh, don't tell us any more.'
I'm a very senses-oriented person, and I want to bring readers in on the level of the senses, so they can experience another culture and another place.
I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy. I would use my strength instead to nurture my belief that my life would unfurl uniquely.
When I was volunteering with Hurricane Katrina refugees in Houston in 2005, I first started thinking about the whole phenomenon of grace under pressure.
As I remember my grandfather and those Christmas mornings he gave for a little girl's pleasure, I know that often a big life starts with doing small things.
It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.
Each book is a separate entity for me. When I'm writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.
The ancient world is always accessible, no matter what culture you come from. I remember when I was growing up in India and I read the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey.'
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.
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.
I love visual art. I painted for many years when I was younger. I have studied modern/contemporary Indian art a bit and am very impressed with the talent in India.
I came from a traditional family, and it was an exciting but challenging transition to move to America and live on my own. The world around me was suddenly so different.
It's very important to balance things; it's imperative to do something for the society, and women in particular, and help women who aren't in position to help themselves.
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.
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.
Unlike novels with a hero or two heroines, in 'One Amazing Thing,' all the characters tell stories they've never told anyone before, so all the voices become equally important.
If you look back at the great classics and the epics and myths, they were for everyone. Different people got different things from them, but everyone was invited to participate.
One of the things that I am learning is that each generation will have its own negotiations with identity. And one generation can not necessarily help the other generation with it.
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.
I was about 12 when I first encountered 'The Moonstone' - or a Classics Illustrated version of it - digging through an old trunk in my grandfather's house on a rainy Bengali afternoon.
I've been interested in dreams myself for a long time, and it's a big part of the Indian tradition, especially where I was brought up in Calcutta in my family, which is quite traditional.
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.
As I've written more, and as other Indian American voices have grown around me, I strive harder to find experiences that are unique yet a meaningful and resonant part of the American story.
I write in my study, where I also have my prayer altar. I believe that keeps me focused and gives me positive energy and reminds me that I'm merely the instrument of greater creative forces.
I came to the plain fields of Ohio with pictures painted by Hollywood movies and the works of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. None of them had much to say, if at all, about Dayton, Ohio.
Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.
I grew up in Kolkata in a traditional family. We had friends who lived in mansions just like the one in 'Oleander Girl.' Growing up, I was fascinated by the old house and the old Bengal lifestyle.
I realise that a novel and a film are different mediums. As artistes, we need to respect other artistes. It also needs a lot of courage to take risks to experiment and interpret known literary works.
In community work, you reach some people, but in writing, I can reach many more people, not only in exploring issues of domestic violence, but also by showing the importance of strong women in communities.
Strong women, when respected, make the whole society stronger. One must be careful with such rapid changes, though, and make an effort to preserve, at the same time, the positive traditions of Indian culture.
I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn't visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts.
...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.
I interviewed a lot of people in India, and I asked my mother to send me a lot of Bengali books on the tradition of dream interpretation. It's a real way for me to remember how people think about things in my culture.
I walk out of the room, lurching under the weight of the lesson I've learned less than one hour into wifehood: How quickly the sweetest love turns rancid when it isn't returned. When the one you love loves someone else.
I was very fortunate that all my holidays I'd spend with my grandfather, experiencing a much more traditional way of life and listening to these wonderful stories, which I now feel are such an important part of Indian thinking.
I came into Chicago in winter - I'd never been so cold in my life! I was very homesick, and a poor student at that time. America seemed so different and so filled with amazing things - and almost all of them were out of my reach.