Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on Wise Famous Quotes.

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.

How pride had kept them from admitting their mistakes - and

why man found himself driven to wrongdoing in spite of good intentions, Krishna replied, Because of anger and desire, our two direst enemies.

I have a lot of respect and love for children's books.

I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.

To me, characters are at the heart of great literature.

She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue.

Each person is distinct, separate. That ultimately we are each alone

Looking down from the heights of Maslow's pyramid, it seems inconceivable to us that someone could actually prefer bread to freedom.

The wind blows through him, cleansing. Salt and distance, smell of the deep.

Knowing yet not knowing is a strange sensation, like being split in two

It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.

I guess there's a lot we hope for that never happens.

Loving someone so deeply was dangerous. It made you too vulnerable.

Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified.
'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.

Doesn't the imagination always exaggerate - or diminish - truth?

Wisdom that isn't distilled in our own crucible can't help us.

A well-meaning man, Dhai Ma liked to say, is more dangerous because he believes in the rightness of what he does. Give me an honest rascal any day!

Rakhi likes the comfortable clutter of her life, the things she loves gathered around her like a shawl against the winterliness of the world.

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

I am a Hindu, brought up mostly in India.

But Krishna was a chameleon.

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

I feel I can express the nuances of the Bengali lifestyle and ways of thinking better than other cultures.

With the strong women I write about, I want to create a sense of strong possibilities.

When your heart is crusted over with your own pain, it is easy to feel little for others.

Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you.

A dream is a telegram from the hidden world ... Only a fool or an illiterate person ignores it.

The Mahabharata might have been a great and heroic battle, but there are no winners. The losers, of course, lose.

To some extent, I draw on what I see around me; in other places, I imagine what I write.

She who sows vengeance must reap its bloody fruit.

Because ultimately only the witness
and not the actors
knows the truth (Vyasa to Draupadi)

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.

But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose.

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

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

Truth, like diamond, has many facets.

I don't put much stock in remembering things. Being able to forget is a superior skill.

But truth, when it's being lived, is less glamorous than our imaginings.

Tomorrow is another day. I've got plenty of things to worry about right now.

Everyone has a story. I don't believer anyone can go through life without encountering at least one amazing thing.

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.

Love. There's no argument, no matter how strong, that can overcome that word.

I like being myself. Maybe just slimmer, with a few less wrinkles.

To upset the delicate axis of giving and receiving on which our lives are held precarious.

'The Mahabharata,' which inspired my novel 'Palace of Illusions,' also has many stories embedded within the main tale.

Sometimes
she knows this from her own life
to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.

My grandfather was a very strong personality. He certainly ruled his household with an iron fist, even though it was often gloved in velvet!

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

I wrote 'Mistress of Spices' at an unusual time when I had a near-death experience after the birth of my second son.

There is no conflict in looking good. You buy things you need, and then you do something good for society.

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.

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

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

If it is good literature, the reader and the writer will connect. It's inevitable.

Dissolving differences has always been an important motive for my writing, right from 'The Mistress of Spices.'

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.'

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

Hope not built on reason brings disappointment only.

There is something in human beings that loves stories.

We even had a different word for Christmas in my language, Bengali: Baradin, which literally meant 'big day.'

I think writers from both East and West have long been fascinated by the ancient tales and the opportunity to reinterpret them.

A kshatriya woman's highest purpose in life is to support the warriors in her life: her father, brother, husband and sons.

Push away the past, that vessel in which all emotions curdle to regret.

Time is the great eraser, both of sorrow and of joy.

I want my books to force readers to recognise the fact that a woman is a human being just like them.

Try to remember that you are the instrument and I the doer. If you can hold on to this, no sin can touch you. Instrument,

Ii would no longer waste time on regret. I would turn my face to the future and carve it into the shape I wanted. - Panchali

Ah, now I have learned how deep in the human heart vanity lies, vanity which is the other face of the fear of being unloved.

To make money for college, I worked in our college dining room.

Why are you attracted to self-sabotage? I

Or is this how humans survive, shrugging off history, immersing themselves in the moment?

In your yearning you have made me into that which I am not.

Everytime i have turned the page he re-enters my life as awkward as postscript

No, Ashok. Love is not a tap. It flows and flows like blood from a wound, and you can die of it.

Often, writer's block will occur when I don't understand a character or his/her motivations. So I will make notes analysing characters.

The mark of a wise man is that he changes his mind when he sees mistake.

A situation in itself," he said, "is neither happy nor unhappy. It's only your response to it that causes your sorrow.

To achieve important things, we have to sacrifice what's important to us. That's an idea that's very central to Indian thinking.

May your heart be mine, may my heart be yours. May your sorrows be mine, may my joys be yours.

Can our actions change our destiny? Or are they like sand piled against the breakage in a dam, merely delaying the inevitable?

I had friends who died in the 9/11 tragedy; some of my friends lost family members in the aftermath of Godhra.

All of us groping in caverns, our fingertips raw against stone, searching for that slight crack, the edge of a door opening into love.

And under it all, earth waited with her lead-filled veins, impatient to shrug herself clean.

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

Even the wisest don't know what's hidden in the depths of their being

You could also call it waking,' Krishna continues. 'Or intermission, as one scene in a play ends and the next hasn't yet begun.

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

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.

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

In the things we love lie clues to who we are. What we want for those we love.

I want people to be sensitive about how women feel and think.

I took a little break after 'The Palace of Illusions' to clear my head.

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.

Pain, which is ultimately only like itself.

Who held his cries in until red swam behind his eyelids like bleeding stars.

I find that it's really important for me to imagine characters and situations. That allows me a lot of freedom.

Each day has a color, a smell.

Aren't we all pawns in the hands of time, the greatest player of them all?

I hate it when people throw away food - I've seen too many hungry people.