""And from one corner of that temple, from behind a pillar, the Evil One stepped out and approached me. I could see it - oh it was so ugly! It said to me, whispering in a low voice - like this - Come with me. Together we will be strong. We will be friends and together we will go out and make fools of the people and laugh at them and grow rich."
"Did I listen to it?""Well, I stood, listening, and then I made such a face - like this! - and I pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed with all my strength - oof! I pushed till I had sent the Evil One back into the hole from which it had come. And I stamped, stamped, stamped on it to keep it down, down, down - with all my force, yes.""
-Anita Desai, Journey to Ithaca, p. 101















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Once the dualities are acnowledged and appreciated............

"Yes! Every day is like a treasure hunt. It's too good. God only knows what else we'll find, no pun intended."
-Lahiri, 153













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“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
















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Life seemed caught in an endless cycle that promised cheap excitement but inevitably led to frustration.
-Kumar, 86

















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"Where thou art, that is home."
-Emily Dickinson














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"What is the meaning of a word?
Let us attack this question, first, what is an explanation of the meaning of a word; what does the explanation of a word look like?
The way this question helps us in analagous to the way the question "how do we measure length?", "what is meaning?", "what is the number one?" etc., produce us in a mental cramp. We feel that we can't point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to point to something. (We are up against one of the great sources of philisophical bewilderment : a substantive makes us look for a thing that corresponds to it.)
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, p. 1












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“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these”
-Emily Dickinson






























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"The Christmas songs remind of the lack of right-wing fundamentalism that is ready to kill."
-Ratna


"White Christmas: this is going to the back of my mind."
-Gabe








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"Mali," she asked him.
"Bamako," he replied instantly.
"Malawi."
"Lilongwe."
She remembered looking at Africa in the Mapparium. she remembered the fat part of it was green.
"Go on," Rohin said.
"Mauritania."
"Nouakchott."
"Mauritius"
He paused, squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, defeated. "I can't remember."
"Port Louis," she told him.
"Port Louis." He began to say it again and again, like a chant under his breath.
-Lahiri, 103





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"He was getting nowhere with her, with this woman whom he had known for only four months and whom he had married, this woman with whom he now shared his life. He thought with a flicker of regret of the snapshots his mother used to send him from Calcutta, of prospective brides who could sing and sew and season lentils without consulting a cookbook."
-Lahiri, 146

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"Unlike Mala, I was used to it all by then: used to cornflakes and milk, used to Helen's visits, used to sitting on the bench with Mrs. Croft. The only thing I was not used to was Mala."
-Lahiri, 190

"I waited to get used to her, to her presence at my side, at my table and in my bed, but a week later we were still strangers."
-Lahiri, 192

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"What is it Mother?"

"It's improper!"

"What's improper?"

"It is improper for a lady and gentleman who are not married to one another to hold a private conversation without a chaperone!"

Helen said she was sixty-eight years old, old enough to be my mother, but Mrs. Croft insisted that Helen and I speak to each other downstairs, in the parlor. She added that it was also improper for a lady of Helen's station to reveal her age, and to wear a dress high above the ankle.

"For your information, Mother, it's 1969. What would you do if you actually left the house one day and saw a girl in a miniskirt?"

Mrs Croft sniffed. "I'd have her arrested."
-Lahiri, 186




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"A mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled."
-Emily Dickinson





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"To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."
-Emily Dickinson







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Sex had little to do with the home: it belonged on the street. And it was public, like a pass or an insult.
-Kumar, 90

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"Go ahead," he urged, walking backward to his end of the bridge. his voice dropped to a whisper. "Say something." She watched his lips forming the words; at the same time she heard them so clearly that she felt them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.
"Hi," she whispered, unsure of what else to say.
"You're sexy," he whispered back.
-Lahiri, 91

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""If I know something, then I also know that I know it, etc," amounts to: "I know that" means "I am incapable about being wrong about that." But whether I am so must admit of being established objectively."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 20



"Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours."
-Salman Rushdie


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“Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.”
-Salman Rushdie


8. "The difference between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain' isn't of any great importance at all, except where "I know" is meant to mean: I can't be wrong. In a law-court, for example, "I am certain" could replace "I know" in every piece of testimony. We might even imagine it being forbidden to say "I know" there.
11. "We just do not see how highly specialized the use of "I know" is."
12. "For "I know" seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, "I thought I knew."
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 13













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The greater part of this confusion was that it seemed to seep into me from my surroundings in Patna: what I despised in the boy who offended me was not particular to him at all; I saw it as a standard Patna trait. Both the boy and I belonged to this place: how could we have behaved otherwise? To realize this truth was to feel very alone.
-Kumar, 83















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"In truth, Sanjeev did not know what love was, only what he thought it was not."
-Lahiri, 147




















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