Quotes from The Mistress of Spices

“Each day has a color, a smell.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel . . . smelling of changes to come.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Monday is the day of silence, day of the whole white mung bean, which is sacred to the moon.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out. Day of suicide, day of murder.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“...don't create snakes out of ropes. You have enough to worry about.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“She lifts a bowl of kheer and her thoughts, flittering like dusty sparrows in a brown back alley, turn a sudden kingfisher blue.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Hope not built on reason brings disappointment only.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Each desire in the world is different, as is each love.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as reality, an objective and untouched nature of being. Or if all that we encounter has already been changed by what we had imagined it to be. If we have dreamed it into being.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“The mark of a wise man is that he changes his mind when he sees mistake.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Ah, now I have learned how deep in the human heart vanity lies, vanity which is the other face of the fear of being unloved.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“When your heart is crusted over with your own pain, it is easy to feel little for others.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“In your yearning you have made me into that which I am not.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Who held his cries in until red swam behind his eyelids like bleeding stars.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“O exhilaration, I thought. To be lifted up through the eye of chaos, to balance breath-stopped on the edge of nothing. And the plunge that would follow, the shattering of my matchstick body to smithereens, the bones flying free as foam, the heart finally released.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“When you begin to weave your own desires into your vision, the true seeing is taken from you.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“And under it all, earth waited with her lead-filled veins, impatient to shrug herself clean.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Open yourself to the sight, and it will show you what you need to know. But never attempt to bend it to your will. Never pry into a particular life that has been brought to your care. That is to break trust.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Maybe it was that sense that comes to us all at some point in the growing-up process, that we are separate from our parents and must suffer our own lives, with our own sorrows. Or maybe it was something simpler, a childish spite, Let her hurt like I’m hurting. And then the light changed and she started driving again.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“A volte mi chiedo se la realtà esiste davvero, se c'è varamente una natura delle cose, obiettiva e intatta. O se tutto ciò che ci accade è già modificato in anticipo dalla nostra immaginazione. Se sognando qualcosa gli diamo vita.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“Pain, which is ultimately only like itself.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“til which fried in its own oil restores lustre when one has lost interest in life. I will be Tilottama, the essence of til, life-giver, restorer of health and hope.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

“We had known it would be hard to leave this island of women where on our skin the warm rain fell like pomegranate seeds, where we woke to birdcall and slept to the First Mother’s singing, where we swam naked without shame in lakes of blue lotus. To exchange it for the human world whose harshness we remembered. But this?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, quote from The Mistress of Spices

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“You weren’t meant for the ice, you weren’t made for the pain.
The world that lives inside of me was not the world you 75
Existence
were meant to contain.
You were meant for castles and living in the sun. The cold running through me should have made you run.
Yet you stay. Holding onto me, yet you stay, reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you
stay. When I know it’s not right for you.
The ice fills my veins and I can’t feel the pain, yet you’re there like the heat that sends me screaming in fear.
I can’t feel the warmth I need to feel the ice. I want to hold it all in and numb it till I can’t feel the knife.
Your heat threatens to melt it all and I know I can’t bear the pain if the ice melts away.
So I push you away and I scream out your name and I know I can’t need you yet you give anyway and I run wishing you would run too.
Yet you stay. Holding onto me yet you stay reaching out a hand that I push away. The cold is not meant for you yet you stay, you stay, you stay.
When I know it’s not right for you.
The blackness is my shield. I pull it closer still.
You’re the light that I hide from, the light that I hate.
You’re the light to this darkness and I can’t let you stay.
I need the dark around me like I need the ice in my veins.
The cold is my healer. The cold is my safe place. You aren’t welcome with your heat you don’t belong beside me.
I hate you yet I love, I don’t want you yet I need you.
The dark will always be my cloak and you are the threat to unveil my pain, so leave. Leave and erase the memories.
I need to face the life that’s meant for me. Don’t stay and ruin all my plans.
You can’t have my soul I’m not a man.
The empty vessel I dwell in is not meant to feel the heat you bring. I push you away and I push you away.
Yet you stay.”
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“When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from Beyond Good and Evil

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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.