Quotes from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Now that she no longer cares whether tears blotch her letter, she feels no need to weep.

Trying to show you something. The stick—it scared you, right? It may even have hurt you, if you hadn't been so quick. But look—in trying to burn you, it's consuming itself. That's what happens to a heart—

But in some way, they remained shadowy figures, their thoughts and motives mysterious, their emotions portrayed only when they affected the lives of the male heroes, their roles ultimately subservient to those of their fathers or husbands, brothers or sons.

mother?" Yudhisthir asked. "Haven't our scriptures

Adoration is a powerful intoxicant.

And whether my lack of friends and visitors was due not to my father's strictness but due to people's wariness of someone who wasn't born like a normal girl and who, if the peophecy was correct, wouldn't live a normal woman's life.

My fault my fault. A refrain so many women the world over have been taught to sing.

They receded into mist, leaving me with another lesson: once mistrust has wounded it mortally, love can't be fully healed again.

I think of the power of that flimsy cloth, the veil. It helped me win a crucial battle today. I must learn how to use this unique weapon to its fullest.

We kiss with a strange urgency, as though we do not have a lifetime of kissing ahead. Is it because, being older, we know how grudgingly the world hands out its gifts, how eager it is to snatch them back?

Such is the seduction of love: it makes you not want to think too much. It makes you unwilling to question the one you love.

Dear Anju, for whom love means that we must want the same thing, always. That we must be the same. She has not yet learned that ultimately each person - even Anjali and Basudha - is distinct, separate. That ultimately we are each alone.

How, without detaching ourselves from the spell of the past, can we focus fully on the moment that faces us?

Talking further about it and realizing how deep my unhappiness went would only fill him with sorrow and guilt. That's how love stops us when it might be healthier to speak out, to not let frustration and rage build up until it explodes.

Haven't you seen how many of them come to the palace each week, just to see us wave to them from the public balcony?

This is what Kaikeyi failed to see: it's not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we're willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.

This is a wonderful, beautiful, and sad book, and I've been recommending it like crazy." —Modern Mrs. Darcy

There's always a connection, a reason because of which people enter your orbit, bristling with dark energy like a meteor intent on collision.

My fault my fault. A refrain so many women the world over have been taught to sing. 'Why do you say that, beti?

Much has been written about Arjun's grief at this eleventh hour and what Krishna said in response to shake him out of immobility.

Later I would ask, "Why did you save me, why?" The serpents never answered. What answer is there for love.

Krishna hinted that such a treasure was inside me—Weapons cannot harm it; fire cannot burn it; it is eternal, still and blissful—but the words, slippery as stones that have been left underwater a long time, slid from my fingers even as I tried to examine them. Wisdom that isn't distilled in our own crucible can't help us.

Remember that, little sister: wait for a man to avenge your honor, and you'll wait forever.

But one thing Krishna said struck me directly. When Arjun asked why man found himself driven to wrongdoing in spite of good intentions, Krishna replied, Because of anger and desire, our two direst enemies.