Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni · 352 pages
Rating: (2.2K votes)
“Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you. . . . But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one we have dreamed into being. We love pople when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not static like cutouts; sooner or later they change shape, leading to misunderstanding, loneliness and loss of love.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“In life, it's best not to take anything for free - unless it's from someone who wishes you well.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“After the fire, when I'd tried to express my gratitude for their kindness to our customers, they'd been awkward, uncomfortable. My father had had to explain to me that giving thanks is not a common practice in India.
'Then how do you know if people appreciated what you did?' I'd asked.
'Do you really need to know?' my father had asked back.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“The dream is not a drug but a way. Listen to where it can take you.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“A dream is a telegram from the hidden world...Only a fool or an illiterate person ignores it.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“Everyone breathes in air, but it's a wise person who knows when to use that air to speak and when to exhale in silence.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“Or is this how humans survive, shrugging off history, immersing themselves in the moment?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“I closed my eyes and willed my breath to slow, my conscious mind to fold itself inward. I could feel heat pulsing from my daughter's head, her frantic thoughts whirling like broken glass. I loosened my hold on my body and dropped into that whirlpool.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“Rakhi likes the comfortable clutter of her life, the things she loves gathered around her like a shawl against the winterliness of the world.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“The story hangs in the night air between them. It is very latem, and if father or daugther stepped to the window, tehyw ould see the Suktara, star of the impending dawn, hanging low in the sky. But they keep sitting at the table, each thinking of the story differently, as teller and listener always must. In the mind of each, different images swirl up and fall away, and each holds on to a different part of the story, thinking it the most important. And if each were to speak what it meant, they would say things so different you would not know it wa sthe same story they were speaking of.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one that we have dreamed into being. We love people when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not static like cutouts; sooner or later they change shape, leading to misunderstanding, loneliness and loss of love.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from Queen of Dreams
“To those not yet old, being old means you’ve been. But being old also means that despite, in addition to, and in excess of your beenness, you still are. Your beenness is very much alive. You still are, and one is as haunted by the still-being and its fullness as by the having-already-been, by the pastness. Think of old age this way: it’s just an everyday fact that one’s life is at stake.”
― Philip Roth, quote from The Dying Animal
“So are you comin' back with me or what?"
Megan lifted her head and sighed. "I have a few conditions."
"Shoulda known," Doug said, rolling his eyes.
"First of all, I did not sign up for a truck stop bathroom," Megan said. "You guys need to start cleaning up after yourselves in there. No more blood, no more hair, no more stains that I don't even want to identify."
"All right, all right," Doug said. "That it?"
"Hardly," Megan said. "I want a hands-off rule on all my stuff. Including my bike."
"Okay..."
"And I want everyone to stop calling me Megan C Cups behind my back."
Doug's jaw went slack as he flushed. "How did you know about that?"
Megan raised her eyebrows.
"All right, fine.”
― quote from Megan Meade's Guide to the McGowan Boys
“Everything bad was worse at the holidays, he knew that from the years of his dad’s absence. All around you were people in an extra-happy mood, and it just made your own hurt bigger.”
― Suzanne Collins, quote from Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane
“Man is the victim of an environment which refuses to understand his soul.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness
“Hire myself out to whom? What beast must I worship? What sacred images should I destroy? What hearts shall I break? What lies am I supposed to believe? March through whose blood?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
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