Quotes from book

Midnight's Children

“Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.”

“India, the new myth--a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.”

“For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake”

“I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.”

“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”

“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”

“optimism is a disease”

“What you were is forever who you are.”

“I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity.”

“There is nothing like a War for the reinvention of lives…”

“Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison.”

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.”

“What can't be cured must be endured.”

“‎No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.”

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.”

“… because silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound.”

“What grows best in the heat: fantasy; unreason; lust.”

“We all owe death a life.”

“What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.”