Quotes from Ruskin Bond

On the spur of the hill stood the ruins of an old brewery. The roof had long since disappeared and the rain had beaten the stone floors smooth and yellow. Some enterprising Englishman had spent a lifetime here making beer for his thirsty compatriots down in the plains. Now, moss and ferns grew from the walls.

house – it hadn't changed much – I walked out of town towards the river-bed. It was February. As I looked across the dry water-course, my eye was immediately caught by the spectacular red blooms of the coral blossom. In contrast with the dry riverbed, the island was a small green paradise. When I went up to the trees, I noticed that some squirrels were living in them and a koel, a crow pheasant, challenged me with a mellow 'who-are-you, who-are-you'.

teacher droned on and on, lecturing

It isn't by throwing things away—and, invariably, replacing them—that we avoid cluttering up our life. It is by holding on to things that have been good and faithful to us. A trusted familiar knows how to live with us, finding its own space, giving us ours, and saves us from the need to hoard and possess that comes from feeling incomplete.

rivers could still be crossed, we set out with a number of tamarind, laburnum, and coral tree saplings and

I was in my late twenties then, and my outlook on life was still quite romantic; the cynicism that was to come with the thirties had not yet set in.

It isn't time that's passing by, my friend. It is you and I.

It was a good river, deep and strong, beginning in the mountains and ending in the sea. Along its banks, for hundreds of miles, lived millions of people, and Sita was only one small girl among them, and no one had ever heard of her, no one knew her — except for the old man, and the boy, and the river.

One evening in November two brothers were seated in a little café in the Rue de la Roquette discussing murders. The evening papers lay in front of them, and they all contained a lurid account of a shocking affair in the Landes district, where a charcoal-burner had killed his wife and two children with a hatchet.

Rebellious schoolboys are unwelcome in a technologically advanced, moralistic, exam-oriented society. We prefer a polished Bill Gates to an eccentric Einstein. Eccentrics do unpredictable things, and we have become afraid of the unpredictable.

I'm still romantic. But the modern world has no time for romance. It's all done on computers now.

Romance lurks in the most unlikely places.

good omelettes are still hard to come by. They shouldn't be made in a hurried or slapdash manner. Some thought has to go into an omelette. And a little love too. It's like writing a book—done much better with some feeling!

sang first of the birth

She had given her heart, even before she was conscious of possessing one, to a stranger unworthy of the gift.

Early in the morning Rikki-tikki came to early breakfast in the veranda riding on Teddy's shoulder

That is another of the attractions of Tramping to nowhere in particular - the finding of somewhere in particular, the striking up of friendships, the discovery of new Springs and waterfalls,unusual pants, rare flowers,strange birds. In the hills a new Vista opens up at every bend in the road. That is what makes me a compulsive walker - new vistas,and the charm of unexpected.

Shouldering the stars! That is how I always think of Simla—standing on the Ridge and looking up through the clear air into the vault of the heavens, where the stars seem so much nearer… And they are reflected below, in the myriad lights of the shops and houses.

In the West they say, 'Never talk to strangers.' In the East they say, 'Always talk to strangers.' It was this stranger who gave us sustenance on the road, just as strangers had given me company on the way to the Pindar Glacier. On the open road there are no strangers. You share the same sky, the same mountain, the same sunshine and shade. On the open road we are all brothers. The

The blackest cloud I've ever seen squatted over Mussoorie, and then it hailed marbles for half an hour. Nothing like a hailstorm to clear the sky . Even as I write, I see a rainbow forming.

jeweller left his shop and ran after us. So did Rocky.

Grandfather was about sixty, a lean active man who still rode his bicycle at great speed.

She did not go down the length of the train selling baskets, but came straight to the tea-stall; her dark eyes were suddenly filled with light. We said nothing for some time but we couldn't have been more eloquent.

Freedom, I was beginning to realize, is something you have to insist upon.