"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."
— Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)

"All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths."
— Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)

"Why couldn't she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else's life."
— Kiran Desai (Inheritance Of Loss)

"No human had ever seen an adult giant squid alive, and though they had eyes as big as apples to scope the dark of the ocean, theirs was a solitude so profound they might never encounter another of their tribe...Could fulfilment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfilment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself."
— Kiran Desai

"Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for another human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion."
— Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)

"Saeed quickly found employment at a Banana Republic, where he would sell to urban sophisticates the black turtleneck of the season, in a shop whose name was synonymous with colonial exploitation and the rapacious ruin of the third world."
— Kiran Desai

"Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?"
— Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)

"But so fluid a thing was love.It wasn't firm,he was learning, it wasn't a scripture;it was a wobbliness that lent itself to betrayal,taking the mold of whatever he poured he poured it into.And in fact,it was difficult to keep from pouring it into numerous vessels.It could be used for all kinds of purposes....He wished it were a constraint.It was truly beginning to frighten him."
— Kiran Desai

"But so fluid a thing was love.It wasn't firm,he was learning, it wasn't a scripture;it was a wobbliness that lent itself to betrayal,taking the mold of whatever he poured he poured it into.And in fact,it was difficult to keep from pouring it into numerous vessels.It could be used for all kinds of purposes....He wished it were a constraint.It was truly beginning to frighten him."
— Kiran Desai

"Može li se ispunjenje ikad proživjeti tako snažno kao gubitak? ...ljubav prebiva u rascjepu između žudnje i ispunjenja, u nedostatku, a ne u zadovoljstvu. Ljubav je bila bol, iščekivanje, uzmicanje, sve oko toga osjećaja osim njega samog."
— Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)