Quotes from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

How innocent we'd been, thinking that if only we willed something hard enough, it would come true.

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

She had always been this way: interested-quite unnecessarily, some would say-in the secrets of strangers. When flying, she always chose a window seat so that when the plane took off or landed, she could look down on the tiny houses and imagine the lives of the people who inhabited them.

But Krishna was a chameleon.

Hope not built on reason brings disappointment only.

You aren't some weak-willed wench. You can control your emotions. Remember all that you've survived. Behave like the queen you are. No one can take your dignity away from you. You lose it only by your own actions.

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!

Motherhood taught me something new about love. It was the one relationship where you gave everything you had and then wished you had more to give.

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

the bird began to carry them to a new life in a new land. We'll be happy ever after, the queen wanted to whisper to her daughter as they flew, but she knew that was not true. Life never is that way. And so instead she held her daughter in silence, heart to heart, and as they traveled each heart drew on the other's strength, so that when they reached their destination they would be ready.

I don't agree with you that the private life must be sacrificed for the public one. And that is the final advice that I leave for my children: my dearest boys, balance duty with love. Trust me, it can be done.

Each desire in the world is different, as is each love.

Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing. Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power?

What is the nature of life? Life is lines of dominoes falling. One thing leads to another, and then another, just like you'd planned. But suddenly a Domino gets skewed, events change direction, people dig in their heels, and you're faced with a situation that you didn't see coming, you who thought you were so clever.

I forgave you a long time ago,' I say to Ram. 'Though I didn't know it until now. Because this is the most important aspect of love, whose other face is compassion: It isn't doled out, drop by drop. It doesn't measure who is worthy and who isn't. It is like the ocean. Unfathomable. Astonishing. Measureless.

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

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

Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as reality, an objective and untouched nature of being. Or if all that we encounter has already been changed by what we had imagined it to be. If we have dreamed it into being.

I closed my eyes and willed my breath to slow, my conscious mind to fold itself inward. I could feel heat pulsing from my daughter's head, her frantic thoughts whirling like broken glass. I loosened my hold on my body and dropped into that whirlpool.

The fates are cruel," Bheeshma whispered, "and they've been crueler than usual to you. But the sins you committed in ignorance are not your fault." "I'll still have to pay for them," Karna said. "Isn't that how karma works? Look at what happened to Pandu, who killed a sage by accident, thinking him to be a wild deer. He had to bear the consequences of it for the rest of his life.

Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, our lives. Is that why we're fascinated by the steadfastness of stars? The water reaches my calves. I begin the story of the Pleiades, women transformed into birds so Swift and bright that no man could snare them.

Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.

Most of all, I understood that things happen to us for many complicated reasons, arising from both the past and the future.

It didn't drain me as I thought it might. Instead, it invigorated me. Such was love's magic—the giver gained more than the receiver.