Rohinton Mistry > Quotes

“...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different. ”
― Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

“You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“...loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence...”
― Rohinton Mistry

“You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”
― Rohinton Mistry

“There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“The whole quilt is much more important than any single square. ”
― Rohinton Mistry

“What an unreliable thing is time--when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl's hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful colour and your hair. .... But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“The Law is a grim, unsmiling thing. Not Justice, though. Justice is witty and whimsical and kind and caring.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Let me tell you a secret: there is no such thing as an uninteresting life
One day you must tell me your full and complete story, unabridged and unexpurgated.We will set aside some time for it, and meet. It's very important.
Maneck smiled. 'Why is it important?'
It's extremely important because it helps to remind yourself of who you are. Then you can go forward, without fear of losing yourself in this ever-changing world.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.”
― Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

“…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Hahnji, mister, you must be patient. Before you can name that corner, our future must become past.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“...there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one. A foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror's wand.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps”
― Rohinton Mistry, Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag

“He who spits paan at the ceiling only blinds himself.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“What sense did the world make? Where was God, the Bloody Fool? Did He have no notion of fair and unfair? Couldn't He read a simple balance sheet? He would have been sacked long ago if He were managing a corporation, the things he allowed to happen...”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“But so far, the invisible line was holding, separating the potential from its realization. Strange, that invisible lines could be so powerful, thought Maneck--strong as brick walls.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize...”
― Rohinton Mistry

“You cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents--a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call LIFE.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“The carnage upon the chessboard of life, left wounded humans in its wake”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“this was an outstanding family subject in our real life.”
― Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

“Narayan explained how they had spent the morning, and Dukhi laughed to hear it. the entire episode made Radha furious. "Why must you torment the boy? There is no need to make my Om do such dirty work."..."How will he appreciate what he has if he does not learn what his forefathers did? Once a week he will come with me! Whether he likes it or not!”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance