Quotes from work

A Fine Balance

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“… 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.”

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

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

“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…”

“How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness”

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

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

“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.”