Girls Burn Brighter Quotes

“We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burned face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes. Flames, flames all around you, licking at your just-born breasts, your just-bled body. And infernos. Infernos as wide as the world. Waiting to impoverish you, make you ash, and even the wind, even the wind. Even the wind, my dear, she thought, watching you burn, willing it, passing over you, and through you. Scattering you, because you are a girl, and because you are ash.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“What is love if not a hunger?”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Here’s what matters. Understand this, Poornima: that it’s better to be swallowed whole than in pieces. Only then can you win. No elephant can be too big. Only then no elephant can do you harm.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“That's the way it is: If two people want to be together, they'll find a way. They'll forge a way.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“And so she decided in that moment - decided, yes, decided, astonished that she could even do such a thing as decide - that she would never again ask forgiveness for a thing she didn't do, for crimes she could in no way recall committing.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Every moment in a woman's life was a deal, a deal for her body: first for its blooming and then for its wilting; first for her bleeding and then for her virginity and then for her bearing (counting only the sons) and for her widowing.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Well, with Mohan, it was even clearer - there could be no love without fear. The two had always been bound for her, she realized, fear and love, always, but just there, floating on the edge of wake and sleep, another thought drifted up, as if from the cloth that was tucked into her pillow: the thought that maybe there had been one exception. Maybe once, just for a short time, in her girlhood, they had been separate. For a short time (she was already snoring, beginning to dream), she had loved Poornima, and in that love, she had felt no fear.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“What fools we all are. We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burdened face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes. Flames, flames all around you, licking at your just-born breasts, your just-bled body. And infernos. Infernos as wide as the world. Waiting to impoverish you, make you ash, and even the wind, even the wind. Even the wind, my dear, she thought, watching you burn, willing it, passing over you, and through you. Scattering you, because you are a girl, and because you are ash.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“It was stillness, she learned, that at the time was the greatest movement.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“There is no way to explain a thing that is perfect.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Forget what I said about a woman who won't listen. The worst thing is a woman who knows what she wants.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“It was tragic to be a burn victim—oil, acid, dowry disputes, cruel in-laws, all that—though what was expected next was a humble, pained exit, feminine in its sorrow, in its sense of proportion. In other words, what was expected was invisibility. For the woman to disappear. But Poornima refused, or rather, she never even considered it. She walked down the street, she held her head high, she wore no mangalsutra, she had no male escort, she was iron in her purpose, imperial in her poise.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“There's the thing with girls, isn't it?', he'd said. 'Whenever they stand on the edge of something, you can't help it, you can't. You think, push. That's all it would take. Just one little push.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“She liked how Savitha seemed to savor everything, even the most mundane. “Look at the sky!” she would exclaim. “Have you ever seen so many stars?”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“What is love, Poori?” Savitha said. “What is love if not a hunger?”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“She then studied his eyes, trying to see into them, or at least see something in them, but they were empty. Barren. As if he were looking into an abyss. A strange land. “It’s a photo,” Savitha scolded. “What do you expect to see? His heart?” Yes, Poornima wanted to reply. I want to see his heart.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“That’s all she could recall her mother ever doing: something for someone else. Even Poornima’s most tender memories—of being fed by her mother’s hand on the bus trip to see her grandparents, or the weight of it against her hair while she’d been combing it—had all of them to do with her mother doing something for her child, never for herself. Is that how she’d meant to spend her life? Is that how lives were meant to be spent?”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Fear was no good, but neither was the monotony of fear.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“The two had always been bound for her, she realized, fear and love, always, but just there, floating on the edge of wake and sleep, another thought drifted up, as if from the cloth that was tucked into her pillow: the thought that maybe there had been one exception. Maybe once, just for a short time, in her girlhood, they had been separate. For a short time (she was already snoring, beginning to dream), she had loved Poornima, and in that love, she had felt no fear.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“How had it survived all these previous months? How had it held on? No matter, it was greater than her body, it was greater than all else. She laughed, for perhaps the first time since the night in the weaving hut, to see it there. To know it was hers.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“What fools we all are. We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burned face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes. Flames, flames all around you, licking at your just-born breasts, your just-bled body. And infernos. Infernos as wide as the world. Waiting to impoverish you, make you ash, and even the wind, even the wind. Even the wind, my dear, she thought, watching you burn, willing it, passing over you, and through you. Scattering you, because you are a girl, and because you are ash.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“What fools we all are. We girls. Afraid of the wrong things, at the wrong times. Afraid of a burned face, when outside, outside waiting for you are fires you cannot imagine. Men, holding matches up to your gasoline eyes.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid. Don’t be stupid.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Understand this Poornima: that it's better to be swallowed whole than in pieces.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“A name without meaning, it’s like having night without day.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“What is love if not a hunger.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“was something else entirely: it was something beneath the face. Or rather, it was something raging beneath the face. It was a light, a fire. And it burned. Even as the hot oil on the surface of her skin cooled, capitulated, the fire within grew brighter.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Like most fears, it was nothing. Nothing.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“Savitha would only smile and burn brighter.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter

“But this she knew: it was better to be wise than to be smart.”
― Shobha Rao, Girls Burn Brighter