Quotes About Tradition

Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.

Unlike her parents, and her other relatives, her grandmother had not admonished Ashima not to eat beef or wear skirts or cut off her hair or forget her family the moment she landed in Boston. Her grandmother had not been fearful of such signs of betrayal; she was the only person to predict, rightly, that Ashima would never change.

In Bengali class, Gogol is taught to read and write his ancestral alphabet, which begins at the back of his throat with an unaspirated K and marches steadily across the roof of his mouth, ending with elusive vowels that hover outside his lips

She prefers books to jewels and saris. She believes as I do.

It's not the type of thing Bengali wives do. Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband's name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?

When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the room, her grandmother reproached her. Not that water. Give her the boiled water. She's not made to survive here.

He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things, seated on newspapers on the living room floor. Instead of a knife she used a blade that curved like the prow of a Viking ship, sailing to battle in distant seas. The blade was hinged at one end to a narrow wooden base.

tour guide tells them that after the Taj was completed, each of the builders, twenty-two thousand men, had his thumbs cut off so that the structure could never be built again.

No parent ever called a child by his good name. Good names had no place within a family.

Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband's name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?

the certain absence of certain foods on their plates conjuring his father's presence somehow.

This was the woman Narasimhan had married, as opposed to whatever girl from Madras his family wanted for him. Subhash wondered how his family reacted to her. He wondered if she'd ever been to India. If she had, he wondered whether she'd liked it or hated it. He could not guess from looking at her

When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive.

Both her parents came from humble backgrounds; botht heir grandmothers had given up the gold on their arms to put roofs over their families' heads and food on their plates. This mentality, as tiresome as it sometimes felt, reassured Sudha, for it was something her parents understood and respected about each other, and she suspected it was the glue that held them together.

Throughout the experience, in spite of her growing discomfort, she'd been astonished by her body's ability to make life, exactly as her mother and grandmother and all her great-grandmothers had done. That it was happening so far from home, unmonitored

She prefers books to jewels and saris.

Quando la lingua con cui ci si identifica è lontana, si fa di tutto per tenerla viva.

Within Bengali families, individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared.

I think Europeans have enough tradition and respect for the experience and body of work of an actress that they don't sell out to the new ones

The problem with the term "The New Fiction" is that the fiction will inevitably be old. The same could have been said about the work of any generation of writers.

In our contemporary world, no one can think or work with a single picture of what a family is. No one can fit all human behavior, all thought and feeling, into a single pattern.

I'm always looking for relations between my work and the old masters.

I've done a lot of period stuff but that's mostly because, in England, we get off on a lot of period stuff, but it's not any kind of particular choice. That's where a lot of the work is.

Halloween is one of my favorite days of the year. I have a strict rule: I don't work on Halloween and I won't travel on Halloween. Not for any reason.