Rahel's Quotes

#1. Rahel's "list" was an attempt to order chaos. She revised it constantly, torn forever between love and duty. It was by no means a true gauge of her feelings.

Arundhati Roy

#2. On Rahel's heart Pappachi's moth snapped open its somber wings. Out. In. And lifted its legs. Up. Down.

Arundhati Roy

#3. Rahel's toy wristwatch had the time painted on it. Ten to two. One of her ambitions was to own a watch on which she could change the time whenever she wanted to (which according to her was what Time was meant for in the first place).

Arundhati Roy

#4. Every thought of God is prayer.

Rahel Varnhagen

#5. Rahel never wrote to him. There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself.

Arundhati Roy

#6. Et tu, Caesar? Then fall, Caesar.
Et tu, Estha? Then fall, Estha.

Arundhati Roy

#7. Remember: Writing is drawing.

Danny Gregory

#8. It had been quiet in Estha's head until Rahel came. But with her she had brought the sound of passing trains, and the light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat

Arundhati Roy

#9. Suddenly Ammu hoped that it had been him that Rahel saw him in the march. She hoped it had been him that raised his flag and knotted arm in anger. She hoped that under his careful cloak of cheerfulness he housed a living breathing anger against the smug, ordered world that she raged against.

Arundhati Roy

#10. Hope for forces which you do not yet have.

Rahel Varnhagen

#11. You're an interesting man, sergeant. You make enemies like a craftsman.

Terry Pratchett

#12. Performing with anthrax in the building is not nearly as difficult as performing in a home where you might get stabbed at night.

Darrell Hammond

#13. If only there were a river of courage, - Rahel whispered. I would bend down, cup the water in my hand and drink.

Jane Kurtz

#14. One beach-colored.
One brown.
One Loved.
One Loved a Little Less.

Arundhati Roy

#15. It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, ploughing it up like gun-fire.

Arundhati Roy

#16. Rahel knew that this had happened because she had been hoping that it wouldn't. She hadn't learned to control her Hopes yet.

Arundhati Roy

#17. The photographic frame is no longer used as a documentary window into undisturbed private lives, but as a stage on which the subjects consciously direct themselves to bring forward hidden information that is not normally displayed on the surface.

Arthur Tress

#18. A mother is God's deputy on earth.

Rahel Varnhagen

#19. Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest.

Arundhati Roy

#20. Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world

Arundhati Roy

#21. This, precious. This is for real.

Laurelin Paige

#22. What am I doing? Nothing. I am letting life rain upon me.

Rahel Varnhagen

#23. You are never really with a person unless you are alone with him.

Rahel Varnhagen

#24. By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.

Arundhati Roy

#25. He realised that in a town a man cannot live as he wishes, but as other people wish.

John Vaillant

#26. The lesson Arendt drew was that a beautiful soul is not enough, for "it was precisely the soul for which life showed no consideration." To live fully and securely, every human being needs what Arendt calls "specificity," the social and political status that comes with full membership in a community.

Adam Kirsch

#27. Rahel thought of the someone who had taken the trouble to go up there with cans of paint, white for the clouds, blue for the sky, silver for the jets, and brushes, and thinner.

Arundhati Roy