The Covenant Of Water Quotes
"The same God who watched over you here will be with you there, molay. He promises us this in the Gospels. 'I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.'"
"Impulsively she picks one blossom, grabbing the stem anchored deep down. It comes free with a splash, a pink jewel, a miracle that something so beautiful can emerge from water so murky."
"Even elephants struggle to walk backwards!"
"In this land, coconut and palmyra palms are so abundant that at night their frilled silhouettes still sway and shimmer on the interiors of closed eyelids."
"For centuries before Christ, sailors from the Middle East caught the southwesterlies in the lateen sails of their dhows, to land on the 'Spice Coast' and buy pepper, clove, and cinnamon."
"A good story goes beyond what a forgiving God cares to do: it reconciles families and unburdens them of secrets whose bond is stronger than blood."
"The sweetness of life is sure in only two things: love and sugar. If you don’t get enough of the first, have more of the second!"
"Suddenly she understands why he has kept his distance since the day of their marriage, saying little, but from afar ensuring her needs and comfort; it isn’t indifference but the opposite."
"Love, she thinks, isn’t ownership, but a sense that where her body once ended, it begins anew in him, extending her reach, her confidence, and her strength."
"How can you forgive a God who takes a mother from her child?"
"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven."
"There are certain things that God does not need to be told."
"The past is as murky as the ghostly faint ink, the crumbling paper."
"There’s a death by drowning every generation."
"The Condition is mine as much as it is his. How can I cast blame?"
"How cruel, how viciously unfair that JoJo should die from the one element he worked so hard to avoid."
"God is a polygamist with two dozen children by various wives and mistresses."
"He dreams of steering a biplane, of becoming lighter than air! He’ll fly his maw over Glasgow and away. He’ll make her smile. He’ll make her proud."
"The horizon rises and then dips; the salt spray is cool on his face; he has the sensation of standing still while plunging toward his future."
"All water is connected and only land and people are discontinuous."
"He breathes in the odors of cured leather, cotton, dried fish, incense, and salt water, the top notes of the antique scent of this ancient civilization."
"In the humid customs shed the hands of the clock have paused, waiting to see what’s next."
"The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring."
"Things have a way of coming back when we think they’re gone forever."
Three thousand years of history," Ravi says gravely. "We Brahmins believe the ocean is polluted, and in crossing to a foreign land over water the soul putrefies; one is damned for all time—
"I’ll see the sun rise in the Bay of Bengal, then see it set over the Arabian Sea. Am I not the luckiest man alive?"
"Seriously, I never liked that Christianity begins by telling us we’re sinners."
"He loves her enough not to say it. Her mind is made up."
"Take nothing for granted, unless you want to feel its loss."
"In the immensity of the cosmos, Rune feels he himself is nothing, an illusion. The difference between him and the leper is no difference at all, they are just manifestations of the universal consciousness."
"Reality is always messy, Rune. Once you open the belly, it’s never as neat as the textbook suggested."
"The mind must get scarred from being rejected in this manner. These two have died to their loved ones and to society, and that wound is greater than the collapsing nose, the hideous face, or the loss of fingers. Leprosy deadens the nerves and is therefore painless; the real wound of leprosy, and the only pain they feel, is that of exile."
"The thumb alone would prove the existence of God. A working hand is a miracle; his are capable of removing a kidney or stacking bricks."
"Too many children get a pet name early that they can never shake."
"Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!"
"To see the miraculous in the ordinary is a more precious gift than prophecy."
"Hands are a manifestation of the divine."
"You’re human! Flawed. Ya’ think you’re alone. You deserve to be forgiven. We all do."
"Imperfection is the mark of our tribe, our secret sign."
"What differentiates us from other animals isn’t the opposable thumb. It’s our brains."
"Reading is the door to knowledge. Knowledge raises the yield of paddy. Knowledge combats poverty. Knowledge saves lives."
"The war that seemed so abstract in Parambil is suddenly all too real, etched on the faces of these brave men."
"A man without a mustache is exposed and vulnerable, like an unbaptized child, the soul still in jeopardy."
"He realizes at that moment that he has fallen in love, and that not every love affair requires a second person."
"The issue is volume. People choose to mumble, to speak in half sentences or whispers. He’s kept that terrible word at bay. He despises labels that take away. Can’t swim. Can’t hear. Can’t . . ."
"Success is not money! Success is you are fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!"
"A woman with unconventional beauty raises the hope that the viewer might be the only one to see it, that in recognizing and appreciating it, he alone has created her beauty."
"I love literature. With these books I can sail the seven seas, chase a white whale..."
"I have been bent and broken but I hope into better shape."
"Half my life is spent on trains. Strangers of all religions, all castes getting on so well in a compartment. Why not same outside train? Why not simply all getting along?"
"We have no practice, he thinks, of seeing our real selves. Even before a mirror we compose our faces to meet our own expectations."
"Secrets are hidden in the most obvious places."
"If nothing changes, if the people have no way to escape poverty, then the next time there’s a famine, it’ll be the same people standing in line."
"Feet reveal character. You could be a king or bishop and adorn your hands with jewels. But feet are your unadorned self, regardless of who you proclaim yourself to be."
"Being a Malayali is a religion unto itself."
"Oh, that sweet, sweet, precious, shrill mewl of the newborn, the sound that says there is a God, and yes, He still performs miracles."
"Philipose wishes they had finished him too, buried him in that spot, in that muddy soil where already the moss fed by blood and monsoon rain grows to conceal any trace of where a tree once stood in Parambil."
"Cromwell disdains chairs and hunkers near the fireplace, the glass under his nose, whisky to be breathed as much as sipped. That mix of deliberation and pleasure is in everything he does."
"This is forgiveness, this is the end of solitary mourning. Joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy are the weeds and flowers of their Eden, and it will outlast the mortal blooms of this world."
"Late that night, his bamboo spoon scrapes the bottom of his opium box."
"All I wanted was your support so I could do my work. But somehow you always seem to think you're giving it to me even when you're taking it away."
"Raghavan, the poor watchman, is hoarse from explaining to clamoring patients that yes, the hospital looks finished, but no, it’s not ready for business."
"The one commodity that’s been abundant from the outset is patients."
"Looks change, but character doesn’t. So, focus on character, not looks."
"Every family has secrets, but not all secrets are meant to deceive. What defines a family is not blood, molay, but the secrets they share."
"What if these acoustic neuromas have a counterpart in the mind, some aberration that’s part of the Condition and reveals itself as 'eccentricity'?"
"What if they have a 'tumor of thought'?"
"Like a river linking people upstream with those below, whether they know it or not."
"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
"The only thing you can be sure of in this world is the woman who gave birth to you."
"Thoughts can be pushed away. Words on a page are as permanent as figures carved in stone."
"White wasn’t the color of summer alone, he thought. It was the color of mourning."
"Don’t promise. Just be you. Be good. Be true. And don’t be a gentleman."
"This is the end of one life. And the beginning of another that I could never have imagined. I have no choice, which is the best kind of choice."
"What she thought was her life is all maya, all illusion, but it is one shared illusion. And what else can she do but go on."
"It’s a little ritual of hers. Or ours. She’s never explained it to me. I think it’s like a blessing, a prayer she sends to me in the middle of the day, to tell me she loves me, that she’s thankful for me."
"The only thing that eased the pain of not having you with us is that we had each other. And I was a surgeon of sorts again—I was paying Rune back too for what he did for me—while Elsie never stopped being an artist."
"Her art is bigger than me, her, or this wretched disease! Her compulsion is hard for us to understand. Believe it or not, she’s still making art."
"The only thing more important to her than her art is that the world think she drowned, that no one ever finds out that she lives here as a leper. She wants her secret to die with her, even if it means her art dying too."
"Now that I know, now that the secret is out, do you think she’d want to talk to me?"