The Inheritance of Loss Quotes

“What was a country but the idea of it?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“He was the real hero, Tenzing," Gyan had said, "Hilary couldn't have made it without sherpas carrying his bags." Everyone around had agreed. Tenzing was certainly first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.
Sai had wondered, should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them? Sherpas went up and down, ten times, fifteen times in some cases, without glory, without claim of ownership, and there were those who said it was sacred and shouldn't be sullied at all.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“All of the third-world flights docked here, families waiting days for their connections, squatting on the floor in big bacterial clumps, and it was a long trek to where the European-North American travelers came and went, making those brisk, no-nonsense flights with extra leg-room and private TV, whizzing over for a single meeting in such a manner that it was truly hard to imagine they were shitting-peeing, bleeding-weeping humans at all. Silk and cashmere, bleached teeth, Prozac, laptops, and a sandwich for their lunch named the Milano.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The solitude became a habit, the habit became the man, and it crushed him into a shadow.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The cow was not an Indian cow; therefore it was not holy?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“That very afternoon the police arrived at Cho Oyu in a line of toad-colored jeeps that appeared through the moving static of a small anxious sleet. They left their opened umbrellas in a row on the veranda, but the wind undid them and they began to wheel about - mostly black ones that leaked a black dye, but also a pink, synthetic made-in-Taiwan one, abloom with flowers.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“They were falling back into familiarity, into common ground, into the dirty gray. Just ordinary humans in ordinary opaque boiled-egg light, without grace, without revelation, composite of contradictions, easy principles, arguing about what they half believed in or even what they didn't believe in at all, desiring comfort as much as raw austerity, authenticity as much as playacting, desiring coziness of family as much as to abandon it forever. Cheese and chocolate they wanted, but also to kick all these bloody foreign things out. A wild daring love...but also a rice and dal love blessed by the unexciting feel of everyday, its surprises safely enmeshed in something solidly familiar...Every single contradiction history or opportunity might make available to them, every contradiction they were heir to, they desired. But only as much, of course, as they desired purity and a lack of contradiction.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent. All you needed to do was to reach out and pluck it.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“She had been mistaken - she was only the center to herself, as always, and a small player playing her part in someone else's story.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The judge got down on his knees, and he prayed to God, he, Jemubhai Popatlal the agnostic, who had made a long hard journey to jettison his family’s prayers; he who had refused to throw the coconut into the water and bless his own voyage all those years ago on the deck of the SS Strath-naver.
"If you return Mutt, I will acknowledge you in public, I will never deny you again, I will tell the world that I believe in you – you – if you return Mutt – "
Then he got up. He was undoing his education, retreating to the superstitious man making bargains, offering sacrifices, gambling with fate, cajoling, daring whatever was out there -
Show me if you exist!
Or else I will know you are nothing.
Nothing! Nothing! – taunting it.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“How could anything be the same? The red of blood lay over the market road in slick pools mingled with a yellow spread of dal someone must have brought in anticipation of a picnic after the parade, and there were flies on it, left behind odd slippers, and a sad pair of broken spectacles, even a tooth. It was rather like the government warning about safety that appeared in the cinema before the movie with the image of a man cycling to work, a poor man but with a wife who loved him, and she had sent his lunch with him in a tiffin container; then came a blowing of horns and small, desperate cycle tinkle, and a messy blur clearing into the silent still image of a spread of food mingled with blood. Those mismatched colors, domesticity shuffled with death, sureness running into the unexpected, kindness replaced by the image of violence, always made the cook feel like throwing up and weeping both together.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“He seemed unaware of what was going on, stared out without hope or ambition, without worry, developing a quality devoid of qualities to get him through this life.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Now here was Saeed Saeed, and Biju's admiration for the man confounded him. Fate worked this way. Biju was overcome by the desire to be his friend, because Saeed Saeed wasn't drowning, he was bobbing in the tides.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Here in America, where every nationality confirmed its stereo-type”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“There was no system to soothe the unfairness of things; justice was without scope; it might snag the stealer of chickens, but great evasive crimes would have to be dismissed because, if identified and netted, they would bring down the entire structure of so-called civilization.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“How many lived in the fake versions of their countries, in fake versions of other people’s countries? Did their lives feel as unreal to them as his own did to him?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“When they would finally attempt to rise from those indolent afternoons they spent together, Gyan and Sai would have melted into each other like pats of butter—how difficult it was to cool and compose themselves back into their individual beings.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The Indian gentleman, with all self-respect to himself, should not enter into a compartment reserved for Europeans, any more than he should enter a carriage set apart for ladies. Although you may have acquired the habits and manners of the European, have the courage to show that you are not ashamed of being an Indian, and in all such cases, identify yourself to the race to which you belong.

- H. Hardless, The Indian Gentleman's Guide to Etiquette

A rush of anger surprised her. It was unwise to read old books; they fury they ignited wasn't old; it was new. If she couldn't get the pompous fart himself, she wanted to search out the descendants of H. Hardless and stab the life out of them. But the child shouldn't be blamed for the father's crime, she tried to reason with herself, then. But should the child therefore also enjoy the father's illicit gain?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“His true spirit had called to him, then, informed him that it, too, was wild and brave, and refused to be denied the right to adventure. As always, the price for such romance had been high and paid for by others.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The greatest love is love that’s never shown.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Time should move,” Noni had told her. “Don’t go in for a life where time doesn’t pass, the way I did. That is the single best bit of advice I can give you.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“A cat - a perfection of containment no amount of love or science could penetrate.

One's involvement in other peoples' lives gave one numerous small opportunities for importance.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than
meteors. The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside. Sure of my life and my death, I observe the ambitious and would
like to understand them. Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air. Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack. They speak of humanity. My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. They speak of homeland. My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old
       sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls. Time is living me. More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous
multitude. They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow. My name is someone and anyone. I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t
expect to arrive. —Jorge Luis Borges”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The men sat unbedding their rage, learning, as everyone does in this country, at one time or another, that old hatreds are endlessly retrievable.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Jemubhai looked at his father, a barely educated man venturing where he should not be, and the love in Jemubhai’s heart mingled with pity, the pity with shame.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“In the valleys, it was already night, lamps coming on in the mossy, textured loam, the fresh-smelling darkness expanding, unfolding its foliage. The three of them drank Old Monk, watched as the black climbed all the way past their toes and their knees, the cabbage-leafed shadows reaching out and touching them on their cheeks, noses, enveloping their faces. The black climbed over the tops of their heads and on to extinguish Kachenjunga glowing a last brazen pornographic pink... each of them separately remembered how many evenings they'd spent like this... how unimaginable it was that they would soon come to an end. Here Sai had learned how music, alcohol, and friendship together could create a grand civilization. "Nothing so sweet, dear friends -" Uncle Potty would say raising his glass before he drank.
There were concert halls in Europe to which Father Booty would soon return, opera houses where music molded entire audiences into a single grieving or celebrating heart, and where the applause rang like a downpour...
But could they feel as they did here? Hanging over the mountain, hearts half empty-half full, longing for beauty, for innocence that now knows. With passion for the beloved or for the wide world or for worlds beyond this one...
Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was gone now, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Qu'est-ce qu'un pays sinon l'idée qu'on s'en fait ?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“do. What could his father have known? This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at one time. How wonderful it was going to be to have things otherwise.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“But Biju went to Jackson Heights, and from a store like a hangar he bought: a TV and VCR, a camera, sunglasses, baseball caps that said "NYC" and "Yankees" and "I Like My Beer Cold and My Women Hot," a digital two-time clock and radio and cassette player, waterproof watches, calculators, an electric razor, a toaster oven, a winter coat, nylon sweaters, polyester-cotton-blend shirts, a polyurethane quilt, a rain jacket, a folding umbrella, suede shoes, a leather wallet, a Japanese-made heater, a set of sharp knives, a hot water bottle, Fixodent, saffron, cashews and raisins, aftershave, T-shirts with "I love NY" and "Born in the USA" picked out in shiny stones, whiskey, and, after a moment of hesitation, a bottle of perfume called Windsong . . . who was that for? He didn’t yet know her face.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss