Quotes from Family Matters

Rohinton Mistry ·  500 pages

Rating: (18.5K votes)


“Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different. ”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“There's only one way to defeat the sorrow and sadness of life - with laughter and rejoicing. Bring out the good dishes, put on your good clothes, no sense hoarding them.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception...and if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters



“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.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“If you ignore little things, they become big problems.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“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.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“The photographs had made him aware how much the street and the buildings meant to him. Like an extended family that he’d taken for granted and ignored, assuming it would always be there. But buildings and roads and spaces were as fragile as human beings, you had to cherish them while you had them.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“ Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories - your life, my life, old Husain's life, they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters



“Hell has ways of permeating heaven’s membrane.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“When a culture vansihes, humanity is the loser.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“The bhel-puri stall was a sculptured landscape with its golden pyramid of sev, the little snow mountains of mumra, hillocks of puris, and, in among their valleys, in aluminium containers, pools of green and brown and red chutneys.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories – your life, my life, old Husain’s life, they’re the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“this was an outstanding family subject in our real life.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters



“The joy and laughter and youth they brought was an antidote to the somberness enveloping his flat, the hours when he felt the very walls and ceilings were encrusted with the distress of of unhappy decades”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“When a culture vanishes, humanity is the loser.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


“Hell has ways of permeating heaven's membrane.”
― Rohinton Mistry, quote from Family Matters


About the author

Rohinton Mistry
Born place: in Bombay, India
Born date July 3, 1952
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Stories are the currency of human relationships.”
― Robert McKee, quote from Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting


“To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You are unpredictable. You're inconstant. You take weeks to fix. The engineer must worry about the water and oxygen and food you'll need in space, about how much extra fuel it will take to launch your shrimp cocktail and irradiated beef tacos. A solar cell or a thruster nozzle is stable and undemanding. It does not excrete or panic or fall in love with the mission commander. It has no ego. Its structural elements don't start to break down without gravity, and it works just fine without sleep.

To me, you are the best thing to happen to rocket science. The human being is the machine that makes the whole endeavor so endlessly intriguing.”
― Mary Roach, quote from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void


“Lost are we, and are only so far punished,
That without hope we live on in desire.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from La Divina Comedia


“For the teacher or coach, the question has to be how to give instructions in such a way as to help the natural learning process of the student and not interfere with it.”
― W. Timothy Gallwey, quote from The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance


“We can shape our own potential. Art”
― K. Anders Ericsson, quote from Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise


Interesting books

Vita Nuova
(4.1K)
Vita Nuova
by Dante Alighieri
The Recognitions
(4K)
The Recognitions
by William Gaddis
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
(18.6K)
Old Possum's Book of...
by T.S. Eliot
Murphy
(4K)
Murphy
by Samuel Beckett
Anew
(13.9K)
Anew
by Chelsea Fine
Palimpsest
(4.1K)
Palimpsest
by Catherynne M. Valente

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.