Oleander Girl Quotes

“May your heart be mine, may my heart be yours. May your sorrows be mine, may my joys be yours.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Sometimes -- she knows this from her own life -- to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Never choose something because it's easier.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“In the things we love lie clues to who we are. What we want for those we love.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“The wind blows through him, cleansing. Salt and distance, smell of the deep.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Sarojini admits he has a point; girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women, and surely Bimal does a good job of that. But deep in a hidden place inside her that is stubborn as a mudfish, Sarojini knows she is right, too. Being loved a little more than necessary arms a girl in a different way.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess's glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti--no fancy modern clothes for him. That's one of the things I admire about him, how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“In the white marble hall of the hotel, I'm waltzing with Rajat. The music is a river and we're dancing in it. It winds against our bodies, muscular as a serpent.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Animals were superior to most humans. Men would have turned away once you had nothing more to give them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Sometimes—she knows this from her own life—to get to the other side, you must travel through grief. No detours are possible.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“Promises only lead to trouble.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl

“He who binds to himself a Joy Doth the wingèd life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Oleander Girl