Rohinton Mistry Quotes

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.

The whole quilt is much more important than any single square.

...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.

World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

In the end, it’s all a question of balance.

So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different

Time had changed the magical to mundane

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

Children don't make judgments about which details are important... a child captures them all.

How can time be long or short? Time is without length or breadth. The question is, what happened during its passing. And what happened is, our lives have been joined together.

The worst part of great poverty is that you become blind to it.

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.

If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.

You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.

In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.

There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting.

Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.

Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient.

Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize.

There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.

He who spits paan at the ceiling only blinds himself.

Hahnji, mister, you must be patient. Before you can name that corner, our future must become past.

Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.

I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition.

The carnage upon the chessboard of life, left wounded humans in its wake

Loss is essential. Loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life.

The Law is a grim, unsmiling thing. Not Justice, though. Justice is witty and whimsical and kind and caring.

Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure.

I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. And there is not much percentage in the future.

You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them, sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus

Depression is a red herring, " said Nariman. "I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. and there is not much percentage in the future.

the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.

democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion

A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten and burnished in order to get the most out of it.

You fellows are amazing, ' the sweaty cook roared over the stoves. 'Everything happens to you only. Each time you come here, you have a new adventure story to entertain us

And the further they go, the more they'll remember, they can take it from me.

I almost forgot to tell you - you have the right to remain silent, but if you do, my boys at the station will process your bones to help you confess.