Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Memorable Quotes 1 - "The Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai

In this life, he remembered again, you must stop your thoughts if you wished to remain intact, or guilt and pity would take everything from you, even yourself from yourself.

Give this people a bit and one could find supporting the whole family forever after, a constantly multiplying family, no doubt, because they might have no food, the husbAnd might be blind with broken legs, and the woman might be anemic and bent, but they'd still pop out an infant every nine month.

If you let such people get an inch, they'd take everything you had- the families yoked together because of guilt on one side and an unending greed and capacity for dependence on the other-and if they knew you were susceptible, everyone handed their guilt along so as to augment yours: old guilt, new guilt, any passed-on guilt whatever.

What was India to these people? How many lived in the fake versions of their countries, in fake versions of other people's countries? Did their lives feel unreal to them as his own did to him?


Sent from my iPhone

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