“I felt that some horrible scene or object lurked beyond the silk-hung walls, and shrank from glancing through the arched, latticed windows that opened so bewilderingly on every hand.”

“I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.”

“You are mine-you know you're mine!" he cried wildly… the moonlight twisted in through the vines and listened… the fireflies hung upon their whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes.”

“He had a wall of masks from every country he‘d been to, like Armenia and Chile and Ethiopia. It‘s not a horrible world, he told me, but it‘s filled with a lot of horrible people.”

“He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.”

“With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open—a woman’s hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road—and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.”

“… occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.”

“I felt a terrible sadness open inside me, a void through which the winds from the end of the universe were blowing.”

“At about 4 AM…. I was suddenly roused by some singing in the carriage, and, on opening my eyes, I saw Mr. Ranade sitting up and singing two abhangs of Tukaram, again and again and striking his hands together by way of accompaniment. The voice by no means musical, but the fervor with which he was singing was so great that I felt filled through and through and I too, could not help sitting up and listening.”

“All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung suspended a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.”