Quotes from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I hid my face in my husband's chest, and the tears that I'd held onto for so long burst from me like a storm. Ram's arms came around me, and I felt, on my forehead, his own tears. Thus we crossed from city to forest, from the known world to the unknown.

Remain true to yourself—and to your heart. Be courageous and remember, even the blackest night must end in dawn.

He who binds to himself a Joy Doth the wingèd life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies Lives in Eternity's sunrise.

fashion wasn't as important to me as to Urmila. There would be time enough to wear my mother's saris. And in any case Ram's eyes were on me all the time, too.

We had known it would be hard to leave this island of women where on our skin the warm rain fell like pomegranate seeds, where we woke to birdcall and slept to the First Mother's singing, where we swam naked without shame in lakes of blue lotus. To exchange it for the human world whose harshness we remembered. But this?

Ram wasn't shy about telling me what pleased him, and he asked me what I liked until I overcame my shyness and answered. Bedtime became at once exciting and joyful, a secret gift I looked forward to all day while we went about our separate duties—his as heir-apparent, mine as new bride.

She says, Why are you attracted to self-sabotage? I don't know, Dr. Berger. Is it because it takes less courage to hurt oneself than to hurt others?

Yes my Lalita, coming at last into your own, I am praying for you. O spices, o all the forces of the world, do not let her give up. Daughter, the birth passage is always narrow, suffocating. But that first free gulp of air filling the lungs, ah. I pray it for you.

I saw that this was how we would live out the next decades, dragging ourselves from one expected action to the next, hoping by meticulous duty to bring each other some small measure of happiness. But the comfort that duty offers is lukewarm at best. Happiness, like a mischievous bird that hops from branch to branch, would continue to elude us.

Give me strength to do the right thing, I whispered, though to whom I don't know. I didn't put much trust in the gods.

Child, the things you don't know would fill the milky ocean where Lord Vishnu sleeps - and spill over its edges.

I'd never bared my soul to Krishna in this way. I was afraid he would laugh at me. Still, I said, "When I thought you had died, I wanted to die, too." Krishna gazed into my eyes. Was it love I saw in his face? If so, it was different in kind from all the loves I knew. Or perhaps the loves I'd known had been something different, and this alone was love.

Let the past go. Be at ease. Allow the future to arrive at its own pace, unfurling its secrets when it will.

Seorang pahlawan tetap pahlawan, tidak peduli apa kastanya. Kemampuan lebih penting daripada kelahiran yang kebetulan. -Duryodana

Ram, lifting him up, also wept, because he knew that Dasharath was dead. 'He died just moments after you left, crying your name, his eyes darkening even before the dust had settled from the passing of your chariot,' Bharat said. I learned a new fact about love that day: it could kill.

wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you'll wait forever.

He believes it to be so. Isn't that what truth is? The force of a person's believing seeps into those around him— into the very earth and air and water—until there's nothing else.

diligent focus on the task at hand.

I wanted to warn my husbands that one couldn't depend on a man who plucked frailty and desire so easily out of his heart. How could he have compassion for the faults of others, or understand their need?

Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you're lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have. I advise you to forget about love, princess. Pleasure is simpler, and duty more important. Learnt to be satisfied with them.

Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you. No matter how famous or powerful they became, my husbands would always long to be cherished. They would always yearn to feel worthy.

MY STRANGE GIFT WITH plants was a mystery to me. Perhaps it was because, like them, I was earth-born. Maybe for the same reason, when I touched a plant, I knew its healing properties.

Sometimes I dreamed that I was walking the wilderness with its swaying grasses, its leaping, golden beasts, the earth-mother the way she'd been before people bent her to their desires.

Surely, all his life, Bharat had loved his mother dearly. Surely he realized that what she'd done had been for his sake alone. But today when he spoke of her, there was only disgust in his voice. Could love, which I'd taken to be powerful and everlasting, be so frail as well? Could you pluck it out of your heart as easily as you'd pull a weed from a bed of flowers?