Shalimar The Clown Quotes
"These agitated periods of sleep-speech were mercifully brief."
"The intruder was an absence, a negative space in the darkness."
"She trembled before her mother’s absence, a void sentinel shape in the dark."
"The pressure of men’s desires was tiresome to her."
"In such a city there could be no grey areas."
"She did not care to dwell on her turbulence, never spoke about her childhood."
"Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war."
"The dreams came to her still as they had come to her child-self: visions of battle and victory."
"Security was percentages. Nothing was ever one hundred percent."
"She promised herself a clean, uncluttered life."
"She promised herself ease, an end to turbulence."
"She promised herself to be content with the humdrum reassurances of the everyday."
"Sometimes the joy takes a long time to come around again."
"Life continued. The snow would melt and new flowers would grow. Death was not the end."
"The question of death is also the question of life, and the question of how to live is also the question of love."
"The world moved on and all enterprises had to adapt to survive."
"To put business before friendship is to displease God."
"The dignity, the moral strength, the intelligence of Sita was beyond doubt and could not so trivially be set aside."
"What had to happen should be allowed to happen or it could never be overcome."
"A woman’s demons were out there, like her lovers, and she could only be coddled for so long."
"He was no better than Yambarzal. Petty rivalries and prideful self-absorption had blinded them both."
"When you pray for what you most want in the world, its opposite comes along with it."
"Fuck this. I came here to do something and I’m going to do it."
"The genius of my magic will triumph over the ugliness of the times."
"Man is ruined by the misfortune of possessing a moral sense."
"Only Man wears masks. Only Man is a disappointment to himself."
"Always do something impossible right at the beginning of the show."
"The world he knew was disappearing; this blind, inky night was the incontestable sign of the times."
"If we can’t get the blasphemous whore herself, then her prettiest friend will do fine."
"I’ll be waiting here whenever you decide to come out, even if it takes me twenty years."
"One took leave of one’s name, one’s past, one’s future, one lifted oneself away from one’s life and existed only in the continuum of the work, borne aloft by necessity and fatalism."
"Every moment of joy in the Resistance, every triumph, was marred by our knowledge of other tragedies."
"The cycle of violence had not been broken. Perhaps it was endemic to the human race, a manifestation of the life cycle."
"Survive one plot and the next one would get you."
"I hate war, but here it is, eh? So I’m not bally well planning to wave my hanky at the departing men and then stay home and knit them balaclavas."
"Ratetta, sweet Ratetta, who could be better than you?"
"Entering the Resistance was, for me, a kind of flying. One could crash or be shot down at any moment, and die in the dirt like a dog."
"There was no end to treachery. Your friends became your assassins. If you trusted too much, too easily, you died."
"If you have not spun this straw into gold by tomorrow morning, you must die."
"God's love cast out its nets for you upon the filthy seas in which you swam."
"The holy love of India brought all of you to the harbor of this safe place."
"God caught up your souls from the black water and revealed your shining light."
"One day even beards will be the subject of ideological disputes."
"The sight of a dead woman who had somehow materialized at the edge of town with her bedroll and bag beside her brought the whole village out of doors, snow or no snow."
"But surely they could not go on this way, not in this blizzard? Surely someone would take her in and scold her and give her a hug and something hot to drink?"
"A rejected child can place the evil eye upon the parent who spurns her, even after death."
"She was his only child. He had loved her more than his own life, until she died."
"Those people think that when a thing happens to a woman like the thing that happened to me, the woman should go quietly into the trees and hang herself."
"The living dead can speak to each other, can't they? Otherwise it wouldn't be fair."
"Can a dead person get shelter from a blizzard, or is it required that she freeze to death?"
"Try not to be bitter," Zoon said. "Try to understand the grief that killed you."
"Only by ceasing to need the things of the world and relieving oneself of the needs of the body can one truly achieve peace."
"If we get protected by this army for much longer we’re going to be ruined for good."
"Freedom to choose folly over greatness but to be nobody’s fools."
"Maybe killing bastards is what the times require."
"The only paradise that's free that way is a fairy-tale place full of dead people."
"The time for love is past. We may die at any minute."
"I will learn the subtle arts of deception and deceit of which you are already a mistress and I will perfect the art of death."
"The iron mullah says that at the root of religion is this desire, the desire to crush the infidel."
"In the modern world everything had been turned upside down and inside out."
"In the ancient tale, when Sita returned to Ayodhya after defending her chastity throughout her captive years, Ram had sent her back into forest exile."
"It was the people—her friend Zoon, her father, even her father-in-law—who had helped her and saved her life, deflecting her husband’s vengeful knife."
"All that remained between them was death, but the deferment of death was life."
"She began to entertain fantasies of earning his forgiveness and winning back his heart."
"The true warrior was not primarily motivated by worldly desires, but by what he believed to be true."
"In the world of truth, there was no room for weakness, argument, or half measures."
"If the way you see things is all screwed up, it is not possible to shoot straight."
"Sometimes, now, she did not hear his voice for weeks, even months."
"I will give my life and soul for India, but my heart is with Pakistan."
"Everything I do prepares me for you and for him."
"Our natures are no longer the critical factors in our fates."
"They drank my imported goods. Goods from foreign! Then what was I to do?"
"It would have been better if they had let him die."
"The sheltered status of the bhand village had been a long-standing annoyance."
"Firdaus was dragged out by her grey hair and pushed so that she stumbled over her dead son."
"Why is your woman making noise about hands when your hands don’t even know how to pray?"
"Was it a man, a woman, an angel or a god who keened thus?"
"The earth was the grabbee, helpless, and powerful uncaring planets stooped low."
"Pachigam was destroyed. Imagine it for yourself."
"The milquetoasts of secular nationalism had had their day."
"The battle would not be lost while the will was there."
"The ruins of Pachigam were still smoldering."
"Fight with me one year. What else is there for you?"
"I’ll never forgive you. I’ll have my revenge."
"Where were the goddamned angels when he died."
"She wanted the ancient Furies to descend shrieking from the sky."