Aravind Adiga Quotes

It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.

A man's past keeps growing, even when his future has come to a full stop.

I was looking for the key for years But the door was always open

The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave

You can't expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet.

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.

See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.

You ask 'Are you a man or a demon?' Neither, I say. I have woken up, and the rest of you are sleeping, and that is the only difference between us.

Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.

I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.

In India, it's the rich who have problems with obesity. And the poor are darker-skinned because they work outside and often work without their tops on so you can see their ribs.

Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.

Having plenty of living space has to be the greatest luxury in a city, and I guess in some sense Bombay is the antithesis of what living in Canada must be.

Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing?

In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.

Inconvenience in progress, work is regretted.

India's great economic boom, the arrival of the Internet and outsourcing, have broken the wall between provincial India and the world.

A White Tiger keeps no friends. It's too dangerous.

But isn't it likely that everyone in this world...has killed someone or other on their way to the top?...All I wanted was a chance to be a man--and for that, one murder is enough.

Because in this world, there is a line: on one side are the men who cannot get things done, and on the other side are the men who can. And not one in a hundred will cross that line. Will you?

Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country.

...the future of the world lies with the yellow man and the brown man now that our erstwhile master, the white-skinned man, has wasted himself through buggery, cell phone usage, and drug abuse

Like most people who live in India, I complain about corruption, but know that I can live with corrupt men. It is the honest ones I secretly worry about.

In terms of formal education, I may somewhat lacking. I never finished school. I am a self-taught entrepreneur, that's the best kind there is, trust me

Every book is a kind of struggle, and it's a miracle when it comes out.

I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.

In a sense, being a full-time writer is less fun because there's no office to go to anymore, there's no set routine, there's no schedule. It can be quite isolating.

Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.

I’ve lived in several countries and been a disaster everywhere.

Like most of my friends in school, I was a member of multiple circulating libraries; and all of us, to begin with, borrowed and read the same things.

I am coming back to New York after five years, and it seems that psychics are taking over the city.

If only a man could spit his past out so easily.

I had grown up in a privileged, upper-caste Hindu community; and because my father worked for a Catholic hospital, we lived in a prosperous Christian neighborhood.

The coop is guarded from the inside.

Any good society survives on a circulation of favours.

The trustworthiness of servants is the basis of the entire Indian economy.

I am not an original thinker-but I am an original listener.)

Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free

If we were in India now, there would be servants standing in the corners of this room and I wouldn't notice them. That is what my society is like, that is what the divide is like.

He can read and write, but he doesn't get what he's read. He's half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I'll tell you that. And we entrust our glourious parliamentary democracy

We may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy.

And our nation, though it has no drinking water, electricity, sewage system, public transportation, sense of hygiene, discipline, courtesy, or punctuality, does have entrepreneurs.

Being called a murderer: fine, I have no objection to that. It's a fact: I am a sinner, a fallen human. But to be called a murderer by the police!

If I were making a country, I'd get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy, then I'd go about giving pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, but what do I know? I'm just a murderer!

The Rooster Coop was doing its work. Servants have to keep other servants from becoming innovators, experimenters or entrepreneurs. The coop is guarded from the inside.

My whole life have been treated like a donkey. All I want is that one of mine - at least one - should live like a man.