Quotes by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

About Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni:

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-American author, poet, and the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel . . . smelling of changes to come.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Each day has a color, a smell.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Monday is the day of silence, day of the whole white mung bean, which is sacred to the moon.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so, only I never knew it!

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The power of a man is like a bull’s charge, while the power of a woman moves aslant, like a serpent seeking its prey. Know the particular properties of your power. Unless you use it correctly, it won’t get you what you want.” His words perplexe...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one we have dreamed into being. We love pople when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The dream is not a drug but a way. Listen to where it can take you.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India. 'Then how do you know if people a...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The story hangs in the night air between them. It is very latem, and if father or daugther stepped to the window, tehyw ould see the Suktara, star of the impending dawn, hanging low in the sky. But they keep sitting at the table, each thinking of the...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get t...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess's glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti--no fancy modern clothes for him. That's one of the things I admire about him, how...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

May your heart be mine, may my heart be yours. May your sorrows be mine, may my joys be yours.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Because it is the lot of mothers to remember what no one else cares to, Mrs. Dutta thinks. To tell them over and over until they are lodged, perforce, in family lore. We are the keepers of the heart's dusty corners.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Author Bio

  • NameChitra Banerjee Divakaruni
  • Descriptionnovelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist
  • Born1956
  • CountryUnited States Of America; India
  • ProfessionNovelist; Short Story Writer; Poet; Essayist