Quotes from book

The Black Coat

“Desperation guides us in life. Rationality does not.”

“Look beyond your self-importance and pain. You will know yourself better.”

“This day says nothing different to me than to you.”

“There is no good or evil in the world. Only images.”

“Everyone has to do something for survival, but that something does not have to define the real character of a person. I am what my head tells me I am. I am what my feelings say I am. I do not depend on anyone’s approval.”

“People want to see you own something as precious so that they are assured that you are not going to steal from them. The richer the leader, the more respected he is.”

“A man should have the right to choose his own shoes.”

“Let us face the truth: why should I feel guilty for being alive? Why should I sacrifice my life in order to prove that I am strong?”

“Imagine a day when this yard will be crowded with hundreds of leaders of the country. They will compete with each other, argue with each other, insult each other, throw shoes, leather bags, teacups, microphones and chairs at each other, break each other’s neck and determination, and then, at the end of the day, shamelessly compromise with each other for the sake of the party, and on the order of the leader.”

“Life is not supposed to make things complex. It is to unwind things, by giving simple answers to simple questions.”

“Our hearts have to cry to end our tears.”

“It is ego that makes a man.”

“Seventy million people will talk about seventy million solutions to the same problem.”

“No man is more of a stranger to you than you are to him. Receive him with trust.”

“It is hard for a faithful citizen to believe that his government does not care about him.”

“The taller the building, the better the view.”

“So this is what famine does to a person,’ I thought as I walked back home. ‘It does not bring one to his knees only; it eats one alive. It is hungrier than a hungry man.”

“Becoming a nationalist is not a matter of decision; it means one has locked one’s mind forever. No reason or practical advice or evidence is strong enough to unlock it.”

“Tell me something about your life, ‘he said. ‘My life?’ the rickshaw-wallah asked. ‘I do not have one.”