The Forest of Enchantments

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Because a trained mind is your strongest ally—and an untrained one your worst enemy.’

what you can’t change, you must endure.’

once mistrust has wounded it mortally, love can’t be fully healed again.

I bore the rakshasis no ill will because I’d never loved them, and they’d never pretended to love me. Forgiveness is more difficult when love is involved.

Amazing

He didn’t understand the complexity of the female existence.

I knew now that love—no matter how deep—wasn’t enough to transform another person: how they thought, what they believed. At best, we could only change ourselves.

So true

All the way back, I pondered the word endure, what it meant. It didn’t mean giving in. It didn’t mean being weak or accepting injustice. It meant taking the challenges thrown at us and dealing with them as intelligently as we knew until we grew stronger than them.

True

Motherhood taught me something new about love. It was the one relationship where you gave everything you had and then wished you had more to give.