Quotes from book

The God of Small Things

“If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win.”

“Things can change in a day.”

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

“She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.”

“When she looked at him now, she couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the boy he had been. His smile was the only piece of baggage he had carried with him from boyhood into manhood.”

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

“Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn't really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them-- just as an education, a precaution.”

“With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat chaped holes in the universe.”

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.”

“Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.”

“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”

“And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.”

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

“Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.”

“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”

“Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.”

“Some things come with their own punishments.”

“There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.”

“He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.”