Quotes from Rana Dasgupta

How many stopped-up men and women does it take to produce one Einstein? Ten? A thousand? A hundred thousand? ... So this is what Einstein meant when he looked me in the eye that day and said, I would be nothing without you. It was not success he saw written in my face. He saw, rather, that I would never accomplish anything at all.

There is far more to us than what we live.

In the future, you'll live astride the line separating life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them. You'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgement falls away, and there remains the miracle of being.

Our saints have always been theives and murderers. That's the proof of the loftiness of their hearts. (spoken by Ulrich's neighbor)

no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come".

Ties are straightened and expressions banished.

They said, Now we are capitalists! but all Ulrich could see was criminality to a principle.

They go to Paris to learn how to make bombs and they come back having learned only how to write poetry, which they think is more explosive.

But Delhi is a place where people generally assume – far more, say, than in Bangalore or Mumbai – that the world is programmed to deny them everything

The amount of good and bad in the world always remains the same. It neither increases nor decreases, it only changes hands.

When they brought in communism it was for the people, so they killed the people. Now they've brought in capitalism, which is for the rich, so they only kill the rich. This time you and I have nothing to worry about.

Reality is never clear, said Boris. It's never final. You can always change it or see it a different way.

You won't do this, my son! I won't have you waste your life. Musicians, artists, criminals, opium addicts ... You'll end up poor and disgraced. I won't have it!