“Love doesn't happen in an instant. It creeps up on you and then it turns your life upside down. It colors your waking moments, and fills your dreams. You begin to walk on air and see life in brilliant new shades. But it also brings with it a sweet agony, a delicious torture.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“And for the first time in my life, I saw something new reflected in the eyes that saw me. Respect. It taught me a very valuable lesson. That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“The one conclusion I have reached is that whiskey is a great leveler. You might be a hotshot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Unheralded we came into this world. Unheralded we will go out. But while we are in this world, we do such deeds that even if this generation does not remember, the next generation cannot forget.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“I wonder what it feels like to have no desires left because you have satisfied them all, smothered them with money even before they are born. Is an existence without desire very desirable? And is the poverty of desire better than rank poverty itself?”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“And I realized again that real life is different from reel life.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“One does not question a miracle.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Till now, my conception of love has been based entirely on what I have seen in Hindi films, where the hero and the heroine make eye contact, and whoosh, some strange chemistry sets their hearts beating and their vocal chords tingling, and the next you see of them they are off singing songs in Swiss Villages and American shopping malls.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“A great artist is not one who merely fits into a genre but one who defines the genre.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“You must never take a direct route to your destination.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“There are those who will say that I brought this upon myself. By dabbling in that quiz show. They will wag a finger at me and remind me of what the elders in Dharavi say about never crossing the dividing line that separates the rich from the poor. After all, what business did a penniless waiter have to be participating in a brain quiz? The brain is not an organ we are authorized to use. We are supposed to use only our hands and legs.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Train journeys are about possibilities. They denote a change in state. When you arrive, you are no longer the same person who departed.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“The line of head is strong, but the line of heart is weak. And most importantly, the line of life is short. The stars do not seem to be right.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“There is some pleasure even in pain. A sweet ecstasy.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“I held my breath and wished for that moment to last as long as it possibly could, because a waking dream is always more fleeting than a sleeping one.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“The burning ambition of my life was to marry her one day. The consuming worry of my life was to whether she would agree.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“It is a destiny of a woman to suffer in silence.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Your beauty is an elixir.
Which has given an orphan life.
Lovesick I will die, from the grave I will cry
Should you decline to become my wife.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Lajwanti made the cardinal mistake of trying to cross the dividing line that separates the existence of the rich from that of the poor. She made the fatal error of dreaming beyond her means. The bigger the dream, the bigger the disappointment.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Confuse your trail, lose your trail.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“...a rainy day ceases to have meaning for a person who has lived in the open under a monsoon cloud most of his life.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“The city may have chosen to ignore the ugly growth of Dharavi, but a cancer cannot be stopped simply by being declared illegal. It still kills with its slow poison.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“After all, what business did a penniless waiter have to be participating in a brain quiz? The brain is not an organ we are authorized to use. We are supposed to use only our hands and legs.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“I may have entered her body, but now I want to enter her mind.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“You have been counting rosary beads for an era
But the wandering of your mind does not halt
Forsake the beads in your hand
And start moving the beads of your heart.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“appearances can be deceptive and the dividing line between good and bad is very thin indeed.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“Love doesn't happen in an instant. It creeps up on you and then it turns your life upside down. It colors your waking moments and fills your dreams.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
“The brain is not an organ we are authorized to use. We are supposed to use only our hands and legs.”
― Vikas Swarup, quote from Q & A
Vikas Swarup
Born place: Allahabad, India
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“I very sorry now, Missy Edith—but cat bite me," said Pablo. "Well, if pussy did, it didn't hurt you much; and what did I tell you this morning out of the Bible?—that you must forgive them who behave ill to you." "Yes, Missy Edith, you tell me all that, and so I do; I forgive pussy 'cause she bite me, but I kick her for it." "That's not forgiveness, is it, Edward? You should have forgiven it at once, and not kicked it at all." "Miss Edith, when pussy bite me, pussy hurt me, make me angry, and I give her a kick; then I think what you tell me, and I do as you tell me. I forgive pussy with all my heart.”
― Frederick Marryat, quote from The Children of the New Forest
“As to the beef, it’s shameful. It’s not beef. Regular beef isn’t veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there’s gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from The Complete Works of Charles Dickens
“It is about the greatness of God, not the significance of man. God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself.”
― John Piper, quote from Don't Waste Your Life
“Some sleepers have intelligent faces even in sleep, while other faces, even intelligent ones, become very stupid in sleep and therefore ridiculous. I don't know what makes that happen; I only want to say that a laughing man, like a sleeping one, most often knows nothing about his face. A great many people don't know how to laugh at all. However, there's nothing to know here: it's a gift, and it can't be fabricated. It can only be fabricated by re-educating oneself, developing oneself for the better, and overcoming the bad instincts of one's character; then the laughter of such a person might quite possibly change for the better. A man can give himself away completely by his laughter, so that you suddenly learn all of his innermost secrets. Even indisputably intelligent laughter is sometimes repulsive. Laughter calls first of all for sincerity, and where does one find sincerity? Laughter calls for lack of spite, but people most often laugh spitefully. Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth. A man's mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man, from head to foot. Someone's character won't be cracked for a long time, then the man bursts out laughing somehow quite sincerely, and his whole character suddenly opens up as if on the flat of your hand. Only a man of the loftiest and happiest development knows how to be mirthful infectiously, that is, irresistibly and goodheartedly. I'm not speaking of his mental development, but of his character, of the whole man. And so, if you want to discern a man and know his soul, you must look, not at how he keeps silent, or how he speaks, or how he weeps, or even how he is stirred by the noblest ideas, but you had better look at him when he laughs. If a man has a good laugh, it means he's a good man. Note at the same time all the nuances: for instance, a man's laughter must in no case seem stupid to you, however merry and simplehearted it may be. The moment you notice the slightest trace of stupidity in someone's laughter, it undoubtedly means that the man is of limited intelligence, though he may do nothing but pour out ideas. Or if his laughter isn't stupid, but the man himself, when he laughs, for some reason suddenly seems ridiculous to you, even just slightly—know, then, that the man has no real sense of dignity, not fully in any case. Or finally, if his laughter is infectious, but for some reason still seems banal to you, know, then, that the man's nature is on the banal side as well, and all the noble and lofty that you noticed in him before is either deliberately affected or unconsciously borrowed, and later on the man is certain to change for the worse, to take up what's 'useful' and throw his noble ideas away without regret, as the errors and infatuations of youth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Adolescent
“Mistakes can be fixed. Bad decisions can be undone. Model houses can be rebuilt. And perfection is only a word that makes you feel bad about yourself.”
― Jessica Brody, quote from My Life Undecided
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The Meaning of NightBookQuoters 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.
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