Kiran Desai Quotes

Writing, for me, means humility. It’s a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you’re writing honestly.

The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.

I do think that the modern India does belong to writers who are living in India.

The Indian diaspora is a wonderful place to write from and I am lucky to be part of it.

A journey once begun, has no end

I don't think you can write according to a set of rules and laws; every writer is so different.

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?

No fruit dies so vile and offensive a death as the banana.

Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for another human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion.

Sadness was so claustrophobic.

When you write on your own, you can write the extremes. No one else is watching and you can really go as far as you need to.

She'd have to propel herself into the future by whatever means possible or she'd be trapped forever in a place whose times had already passed.

Slowly, painstakingly, like ants, men would make their paths and civilization and their wars once again, only to have it wash away again.

I feel as comfortable anywhere as I feel uncomfortable anywhere.

We think of immigration as a Western issue but, of course, it isn't.

I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers.

The publishing world is very timid. Readers are much braver.

Why couldn't she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else's life.

All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

New York is a lovely city. It is an easy city to go back to and an easy city to leave. Every time I go there I immediately make travel plans.

When you build on lies, you build strong and solid. It was the truth that undid you.

But the child shouldn't be blamed for the father's crime, she tried to reason with herself, then. But should the child therefore also enjoy the father's illicit gain?

Should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them?