Quotes from Thrity Umrigar

The body is wise. It often knows more - and sooner - than our brains do. Every family, every home in India seemed to have its own saga of melodrama and heartache.

I'm not sure if I should pray to the Muslim God or the Hindu one. If Abdul were alive he would say there is only one God and I must pray to the God called Justice. But I am going to court because Abdul is dead.

Maybe when people die, they become a spec in the eye of God. Maybe it Abdul to who I must pray. Maybe he can do in death what he couldn't do in life. Save me from the devils I must face in court.

no, a check, and pushing it at him. He took hold of

From the time she was in her teens, Sera has been fascinated by this paradox—how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth—from before birth, even—is still a stranger

Maybe, in the end, that's all that love was—doing the hard thing.

Not roses and valentines and walks on the beach, but simply being present, day after ordinary day. The extraordinary romanticism of ordinary life.

balloonwallas tried to seduce the children with their

and Smita watched the nurse's startled smile that her American patient had thanked her in Hindi.

The hunger for the world is bigger than the world itself and no dinner of mutton cutlets and okra is going to feed it.

Parvati has simply given words to the melody that Bhima has hummed for a long time.

Because a woman can live in one of two houses--- fear or love. It is impossible to live in both at the same time.

First time since I come to Am'rica, I not with husband or Rekha or in restaurant or store or car or apartment. I's all alone and I loves it. First time I feel everything not borrow. What I mean by that? When I with the husband, I seeing everything through his eyes - moon, sun, sky, tree, parking lot, store, everything. If he feeling sun too hot, I feeling upset. If he cursing the cold, I angry with snow. My brains not thinking my own thoughts.

Until she went with him to India the first time after they were married. Then it all made sense, and she realized that the hospitality he displayed to all guests was larger than he was - it was cultural, hereditary, something coded into his DNA.

me up," she mumbled. "She didn't say who. I just assumed . . ." She took in the bemused way he was looking at her. "I'm sorry." He shook his head. "No, it's okay. Why sorry? Nothing wrong

Everything was cutting edge. Everyone needed an extreme makeover. Everything was now available 24/7; everybody was wired and Blue-toothed; everyone was an American Idol. It was no longer enough to live your life; now you had to be a Survivor.

when they gazed at the sea, people held their heads up, and their faces became curious and open, as if they were searching for something that linked them to the sun and the stars, looking for that something they knew would linger long after the wind had erased their footprints in the dust.

Or perhaps it is that time doesn't heal all wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the angle of your head, the jutting of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile - has collapsed under the weight of your griefs.

She knew that she had taken the easy way out, that she had let the steam escape from the boiling pot of her emotions. What she had meant to say was not "I love you" at all. What she had wanted to say was "I love life," a self-declaration as naked and real and authentic as an X-ray.

This is love--not what we say to each other but what we not say. Sometime it just one look exchange. Sometime one word. But underlining everything we say or not say, something else. Something heavy and deep, like when we in bed and looking into each other's eyes. For six years, everything between husband and me was on top, like skin. Now it hidden, like bone and muscle. [...] He care for me now. He finally see me. And he like what he see.

Peter was a birthday party, all candles and cake and balloons. Now the party was over. Sudhir was the rest of the year, the real deal, the place where she'd built her nest. What she and Sudhir had constructed together, someone like Peter could only dream about. If he was even smart enough to realize and envy them what they had, that is. Which she somehow doubted he was.

Maggie decided to walk into the dense grove of trees. Here, on the back lawn, Lakshmi would feel exposed, naked, in the glare of the sunlit afternoon. But the light would be weak in the woods, and if there was one thing that Maggie had learned in her years as a therapist, it was that shame required darkness.

But now he knew the truth—there were no adults. There were just tall children stumbling around the world, walking pools of unfinished hopes, unmet needs, and seething desires. The unsuccessful ones ended up in asylums. The ones who learned to masquerade those needs became politicians.

Ma used to say: When the God enter into your house, he not enter looking like the God. He enter looking like human being. God enter my life looking like Maggie.