The Inheritance of Loss Quotes

“The tight calendar had calmed him, as did the constant exertion of authority. How he relished his power over the classes that had kept his family pinned under their heels for centuries—like the stenographer, for example, who was a Brahmin.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The shiny-eyed girl said it many ways so that the meaning might be conveyed from every angle—that he might comprehend their friendliness completely in this meeting between Indians abroad of different classes and languages, rich and poor, north and south, top caste bottom caste.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“But Lola was too dizzy to listen. Her suitcases were stuffed with Marmite, Oxo bouillon cubes, Knorr soup packets, After Eights, daffodil bulbs, and renewed supplies of Boots cucumber lotion and Marks and Spencer underwear—the essence, quintessence, of Englishness as she understood it.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Close up, they could see dozens of people defecating onto the tracks, rinsing their bottoms with water from a can. "Dirty people," she said, "poverty is no excuse, no it isn’t, no don’t try and tell me that. Why must they do such things here?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Time might have died in the house that sat on the mountain ledge, its lines grown indistinct with moss, its roof loaded with ferns, but with each letter, the cook trundled toward the future.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“goat. An accident, they said, and there was nobody to blame—it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own
tiny happiness and live safely within it.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“immigration, so often presented as a heroic act, could just as easily be the opposite; that it was cowardice that led many to America; fear marked the journey, not bravery; a cockroachy desire to scuttle to where you never saw poverty, not really, never had to suffer a tug to your conscience; where you never heard the demands of servants, beggars, bankrupt relatives, and where your generosity would never be openly claimed; where by merely looking after your own wife-child-dog-yard you could feel virtuous.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Human life was stinking, corrupt, and meanwhile there were beautiful creatures who lived with delicacy on the earth without doing anyone any harm. “ We should be dying,” the judge almost wept.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“This was how history moved, the slow build, the quick burn, and in an incoherence, the leaping both backward and forward, swallowing the young into old hate. The space between life and death, in the end, too small to measure.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“There was grace in forgetting and giving up, she reminded it; it was childish not to—everyone had to accept imperfection and loss in life.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“A stick insect as big as a small branch climbed the steps.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“He had anticipated this and had tried to indicate to her long before how she must look at love; it was tapestry and art; the sorrow of it, the loss of it, should be part of the intelligence, and even a sad romance would be worth more than any simple bovine happiness.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“a technology fair on cow dung gas stoves was being attended by delegates from all over the”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“الزمن يمضي والأشياء تتغير. أي شيء في الماضي ظل على حاله ولم يتغير؟ الحاضر يغير الماضي، إذا نظرت خلفك لن تجد ما تركته وراءك”
― كيران ديساي, The Inheritance of Loss

“إن أعظم حب هو الذي لا يبدو للعيان”
― كيران ديساي, The Inheritance of Loss

“old hatreds are endlessly retrievable.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

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

“Without naïveté, father and son would have been defeated; had they aimed lower, according to the logic of probability, they would have failed.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“He had told her the story of his brave ancestors in the army, but why didn’t he ever speak of his family here and now?”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“These people are just louts, and that’s the truth,”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“The repetition had willed her, anticipated her, cursed her, and certain moves made long ago had produced all of them: Sai, judge, Mutt, cook, and even the mashed-potato car.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“beyond anything the INS could imagine, it was an old-fashioned romance.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Saeed, he relished the whole game, the way the country flexed his wits and rewarded him; he charmed it, cajoled it, cheated it, felt great tenderness and loyalty toward it. When it came time, he who had jigged open every back door, he who had, with photocopier, Wite-Out, and paper cutter, spectacularly sabotaged the system (one skilled person at the photocopy machine, he assured Biju, could bring America to its knees), he would pledge emotional allegiance to the flag with tears in his eyes and conviction in his voice. The country recognized something in Saeed, he in it, and it was a mutual love affair. Ups and downs, sometimes more sour than sweet, maybe, but nonetheless,”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“They sipped and ate, all of existence passed over by nonexistence, the gate leading nowhere, and they watched the tea spill copious ribbony curls of vapor, watched their breath join the mist slowly twisting and turning, twisting and turning.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“and gradually his face took on an expression of grudging pudding contentment.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“His face seemed distanced by what looked like white powder over dark skin—or was it just the vapor? And from him came a faint antibiotic whiff of cologne, a little too far from perfume, a little too close to a preserving liquid. There was more than a hint of reptile in the slope of his face, the wide hairless forehead, the introverted nose, the introverted chin, his lack of movement, his lack of lips, his fixed gaze. Like other elderly people, he seemed not to have traveled forward in time but far back. Harking to the prehistoric, in attendance upon infinity, he resembled a creature of the Galápagos staring over the ocean.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

“Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn’t throw the coconut and he didn’t cry. Never again would he know love for a human being that wasn’t adulterated by another, contradictory emotion.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss