Quotes from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Try to remember that you are the instrument and I the doer. If you can hold on to this, no sin can touch you. Instrument

I may be injured; I may even be wounded to the heart; but I'm not defeated yet.

love something—or someone—so much that you would willingly sacrifice yourself. I want to be brave like that.

It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.

I listened mesmerized, visualizing the goddess with her divine mate, wondering if it was possible for humans to replicate this perfect relationship. Would I be blessed with such a love in my life?

Truth, like diamond, has many facets.

How pride had kept them from admitting their mistakes—and

Ah, now I have learned how deep in the human heart vanity lies, vanity which is the other face of the fear of being unloved.

When your heart is crusted over with your own pain, it is easy to feel little for others.

If you want to stand up against wrongdoing, if you want to bring about change, do it in a way that doesn't bruise a man's pride. You'll have a better chance of success.

Pain makes us crazy. All we want is to throw the live coal of it as far from us as we can, not thinking what we might set afire.

My first lesson on nature of love was that in a moment it could fulfill the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.

Forgive me, Sister, I said silently, you who are the unsung heroine of this tale, the one who has the tougher role: to wait and to worry.

What is the most wondrous thing on earth? Each day countless humans enter the Temple of Death, yet the ones left behind continue to live as though they were immortal.

And this is one of the final things I learn about love: it's found in its purest form, on this imperfect earth, between mothers and young children, because there's nothing they want except to make each other happy.

This is the nature of sorrow; often it fades with time, but once in a while it remains lodged below the surface of things, a stubborn thorn beneath a fingernail, making itself felt every time you brush against it. (How well I knew this, for random events would startle me into the memory of a pair of ancient eyes.)

It's a rare man—and an even rarer ruler—that can remain untouched by jealousy in the face of a peer's sudden prosperity.

It's hard to tell them apart, what we bring upon ourselves and what destiny determines. They're as difficult to disentangle as love and sorrow.

Is the desire for vengeance stronger than the longing to be loved? What evil magic does it possess to draw the human heart so powerfully to it?

But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose.

Anger and self-pity are useless emotions, so I push them away and speak calmly, even though my heart is breaking all over again.

All of us groping in caverns, our fingertips raw against stone, searching for that slight crack, the edge of a door opening into love.

No, Ashok. Love is not a tap. It flows and flows like blood from a wound, and you can die of it.

Love was full of contradictions. Sometimes the person you loved weakened you and sometimes he or she made you a stronger person.