Before We Visit the Goddess Quotes

“I don't put much stock in remembering things. Being able to forget is a superior skill.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“What is the nature of life?
Life is lines of dominoes falling.
One thing leads to another, and then another, just like you'd planned. But suddenly a Domino gets skewed, events change direction, people dig in their heels, and you're faced with a situation that you didn't see coming, you who thought you were so clever.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Push away the past, that vessel in which all emotions curdle to regret.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, our lives. Is that why we're fascinated by the steadfastness of stars? The water reaches my calves. I begin the story of the Pleiades, women transformed into birds so Swift and bright that no man could snare them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family's name. Wicked daughters are firebrands, blackening the family's fame.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“She did understand about sacrificing values for the sake of love. It was a lesson all mothers had to memorize.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“My mother clutches at the collar of my shirt. I rub her back and feel her tears on my neck. It's been decades since our bodies have been this close. It's an odd sensation, like a torn ligament knitting itself back, lumpy and imperfect, usable as long as we know not to push it too hard.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“She lifts her eyes, and there is Death in the corner, but not like a king with his iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Pain makes us crazy. All we want is to throw the live coal of it as far from us as we can, not thinking what we might set afire.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Why are you attracted to self-sabotage? I”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“This was something I had achieved by myself, without having to depend on anyone. No one could take it away. That’s what I want for you, my Tara, my Bela. That’s what it really means to be a fortunate lamp.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“The goddess doesn’t care how many minutes you spend in front of her,” he said. “Only how much you want to be here.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“She put on some music. Drum and flute, I think. She played it soft, because it was dreadfully late, a time when all good men and women, or at least the practical ones, had gone to bed. Then she danced for me.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“I guess that's when people call their mothers - when their world is falling apart.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“I long to stretch out on the sofa, wrapping myself in the red quilt that's lying there. Then, with a stab, I recognize the quilt. My father had brought it back from a business trip he took to New England long ago. Ironic, how objects remain in your life long after people have exited.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“​It felt as though someone had reached into him and was wresting out his heart. In later life his sorrows would be deep-drawn and bone-aching sad, but never like this. Perhaps only the young can feel such exquisitely intense pain.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“days slow as cattle grazing in a parched summer field.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“She says, Why are you attracted to self-sabotage? I don’t know, Dr. Berger. Is it because it takes less courage to hurt oneself than to hurt others?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Their voices were excited and self-assured and conspiratorial, the way they used to be in India, when they were political leaders. As she watched them it struck her that America might have saved their lives, but it had also diminished them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“people look down on a woman without education. She has few options. To survive, she is forced to put up with ill-treatment. She must depend on the kindness of strangers, an unsure thing. I do not want that for you”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“Even the most startling adventure, sooner or later, must become routine.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“(Where women are honored, there the gods are pleased.) —Manusmriti 3/56, 100 CE”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“I begin the story of the Pleiades, women transformed into birds so swift and bright that no man could snare them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“That’s Hercules,” I say, though perhaps I’m pointing at Ursa Major. I tell Mrs. Mehta of his death at the hands of his wife, who suspected him of loving another woman.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“People get addicted to love. Or just to having someone around. So many times Mr. Mehta gave me grief. I had to get his permission for every little thing: read a book, go to the cinema, even phone my parents. A lot of times he’d say no just because he could. Yet when he died, I wept and wept.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“The shock I’d felt, standing in the doorway, was a terrible thing. But what was worse was that in a moment it was gone, as though all along a part of me had known that this was where I was headed. That I, too, hadn’t been worth a man’s faithful loving.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess

“This is a wonderful, beautiful, and sad book, and I’ve been recommending it like crazy.” —Modern Mrs. Darcy”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess