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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Popular quotes

“Our love has evolved into something else because of the way we respect and listen to each other's needs.”
― Tiffany King, quote from Meant to Be

“When a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.”
― Albert Jay Nock, quote from Our Enemy the State

“Five years from today. Where, exactly, do you want to be?"
Her eyes lit up. Sadie loves that kind of question. "Ooh. Wow. Let me think. December, getting close to Christmas. I'll be twenty-one..."
"Passed out under the tree with a fifth of Jack, half a 7-Eleven rotisserie chicken, and a cat who poops in your shoes." Frankie returned our startled glances with his lizard look. "Oh, wait. That's me. Sorry."
I opted to ignore him. "Five years to the day,Sadie."
She glanced quickly between Frankie and me. "Do we need a time-out here?"
"Nope," I said. "Carry on."
"Okay. Five years. I will be in New York visiting the pair of you because, while NYU is fab, I will be halfwau through my final year of classics at Cambridge, trying to decide whether I want to be a psychologist or a pastry chef. You," she said sternly to Frankie, "will be drinking appropriate amounds of champagne with your boyfriend, a six-three blond from Helsinki who happens to design for Tory Burch. Ah! Don't say anything. It's my future. You can choose a different designer when it's you go. I want the Tory freebies." She turned to me. "We will be sipping said champagne in the middle of the Gagosian Galley, because it is the opening night of your first solo exhibit. At which everything will sell."
She punctuated the sentence by poking the air with a speared black olive.
"I love you," I told her. Then, "But that wasn't really about you."
"Oh,but it was," she disagreed, going back to her salad. "It's exactly where I want to be. Although" -she grinned over a tomato wedge- "I might have the next David Beckham in tow."
"The next David Beckham is a five-foot-tall Welshman named Madog Cadwalader. He has extra teeth and bow legs."
"Really?" Sadie asked.
Frankie snorted. "No.Not really.”
― Melissa Jensen, quote from The Fine Art of Truth or Dare

“When hands of hate turn dark and tragic, Virtue makes for more than magic. Ever since the world was new, They rise, always, a worthy few. When tyrants fill the land with death, And innocents draw in final breath, Warriors noble step from shadow, With powers hidden, end the battle, Committed to win, to do what they must, Defending good hope against the unjust: In spite of danger, doom, and doubt, Before these few, darkness burns out. This timeless history is beget To show how light with darkness met: Their legacy may not be seen, But we recall wits and weapons keen That warriors sharpen and apply, By courage and talent live and die. And so hope we have, in darkest night: The good find a way, and a means, and light.”
― Kyle Timmermeyer, quote from Reintroduction

“Look, I have no idea what's going on," I said, catching my breath. "I don't like myself either. I don't know what's happening to me. I don't want to tell you to fuck off. But you gotta understand, everything in my life feels different. I just want so badly to know if you like me. And I know how asinine that sounds. If you want me to leave you alone, I will, but sometimes... sometimes you meet somebody and you know that whatever you did before, whatever your life was before, it must have been right... nothing could've been too bad or gone too far wrong because it led you to this person. You're that person. Do you want me to go away?”
― Ethan Hawke, quote from The Hottest State

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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.