The Story Hour Quotes

“We can't be responsible for other people's reactions to us, Lakshmi," she said. "We can only make sure our intentions are good.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“We all begin with a story of ourselves that we believe to be true. But perhaps true personal change, even healing, can only happen when we change that narrative, when we begin to tell ourselves and others a different story. Surely”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” —FLANNERY O’CONNOR “I”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“Think of how far you've come," Maggie said softly. "And then ask yourself how much farther you wish to go”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“I will miss you, he said, and his words was both honey and poison, sun and moon in the same sky.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“I am not ascare to die. I am only ascare that after death I be alone. Maybe because of suicide, I go to the hell? If hell all hot and crowded and noiseful, like Christian minister on TV say, then I not care because it will be just like India. But if hell cold and quiet, with lot of snow and leaf-empty trees, and people who smile with string-thin lips, then I ascare. Because it seems so much like my life in Am'rica.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“Every year when I stands first in my class, Ma gives me the advice: Daughter, she say, never be gamandi. What you have, given to you by God. You just a basket into which God puts the flowers. Flowers not belong to you. They belongs to God. Same way, your clever belong to God.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“When the God enter into your house, he not enter looking like the God. He enter looking like human being. God enter my life looking like Maggie. “Holy cow,” Maggie say, laughing. “I”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“This solidarity business I used to talk about ain't just--what do you youngsters call it?--theoretical. It means putting your body, your physical self, on the line, baby girl. Even when--especially when--it ain't convenient.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“Clients didn't value what they got for free. It was human nature to devalue what came too cheap or easy.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“Ma used to say: When the God enter into your house, he not enter looking like the God. He enter looking like human being. God enter my life looking like Maggie.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“...Maggie decided to walk into the dense grove of trees. Here, on the back lawn, Lakshmi would feel exposed, naked, in the glare of the sunlit afternoon. But the light would be weak in the woods, and if there was one thing that Maggie had learned in her years as a therapist, it was that shame required darkness.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“Peter was a birthday party, all candles and cake and balloons. Now the party was over. Sudhir was the rest of the year, the real deal, the place where she'd built her nest. What she and Sudhir had constructed together, someone like Peter could only dream about. If he was even smart enough to realize and envy them what they had, that is. Which she somehow doubted he was.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“She felt grief move within her like a barefoot woman flitting through a dark house.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“He listen something in my voice because he look up immediately. His eyes as blue as July sky. His long yellow hair fall like sunshine on his forehead and my finger burn from not touching it.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“None of it made any sense to her - the deceit, the betrayal, the sheer chutzpah of it. Like something from a movie. Who in real life acted this way? But then she remembered this had happened in India, and India was not real life. The most heartbreaking, most desperate, most bizarre stories she had ever heard all came from India. Every story was epic; every emotion was exaggerated; every action was melodramatic. Desperate love, mad obsessions, outbursts of rage, bizarre self sacrifice, self immolation. Young women eat rat poison, jumping off buildings, or burning themselves alive. Young men throwing themselves onto railroad tracks in the path of oncoming trains. And all this self destruction over issues that in the West would be solved by a simple elopement or estrangement from one's parents or a move to a different city.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour

“Until she went with him to India the first time after they were married. Then it all made sense, and she realized that the hospitality he displayed to all guests was larger than he was - it was cultural, hereditary, something coded into his DNA.”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour