Quotes from Rohinton Mistry

Hell has ways of permeating heaven's membrane.

Don't you see, said Father, that you are confusing fiction with facts, fiction does not create facts, fiction can come from facts, it can grow out of facts by compounding, transposing, augmenting, diminishing, or altering them in any way; but you must not confuse cause and effect, you must not confuse what really happened with what the story says happened, you must not lose your grasp on reality, that way madness lies.

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus on unrefrigerated food? Vasantrao Valmik the proofreader would say it was all part of living, that the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair, to embrace change. But embrace misery and destruction?

I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom - it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the professors' lectures.

Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories – your life, my life, old Husain's life, they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different.

Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated – not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

How else do people find happiness except in fulfilling their duty? There can be no happiness without fairness, she said. Remember that, Om - don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.

this was an outstanding family subject in our real life.

If time were a bolt of cloth ... I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily.

Soon the evening gloom would materialize, infect the fibre-filled air, drape itself over her bed, depress her from now till morning.

He had learned that dignity could not be acquired from accoutrements and accessories; it cam unasked, it grew from one's ability to endure.

I don't like clever books; I like honest books.

The joy and laughter and youth they brought was an antidote to the somberness enveloping his flat, the hours when he felt the very walls and ceilings were encrusted with the distress of of unhappy decades

Losing, and losing again, is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.

And, in any case, the idea of independence was a fantasy. Everyone depended on someone.

Please do not bring female visitors of the opposite sex into rooms.

People sleeping on pavements gives industry a bad name. My friend was saying last week—he's the director of a multinational, mind you, not some small, two-paisa business—he was saying that at least two hundred million people are surplus to requirements, they should be eliminated.

Marriage is like death, only happens once.

The answers were not easy to come by, they lay in the garden of the past, which memory had dug up and replanted in plots of its own choosing.

There can be no happiness without fairness

I almost forgot to tell you - you have the right to remain silent, but if you do, my boys at the station will process your bones to help you confess.

And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else's. A little annoyance they acted out like a gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle would do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest.