Rohinton Mistry citations

“You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”

“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”

“Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.”

“… the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.”

“If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.”

“Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder”

“There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting.”

“Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure…”

“What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things he allowed to happen…”

“If time were a bolt of cloth,” said Om, “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.”

“Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.”

“Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.”

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”

“How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness”

“Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.”