The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told Quotes

“I moved a part of my bed a little distance away from the domain of fear and desire.”
― Muhammad Umar Memon, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told

“Ba kuja sar niham keh chun zanjir Har dare halqa-e dare digar-ast (Hide—but where? Each door I close opens another.) —Anonymous (found in a ghazal by Mir Taqi Mir)”
― Muhammad Umar Memon, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told

“What if we found an abandoned child here—wouldn’t that be fun?’ ‘What’s the use? We’ll bring him up, worry our heads over him, he’ll grow up and one day leave us.’ ‘That’s never stopped parents from bringing up kids.”
― Memon, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told

“Life’s an awfully tiring game,’ the second old man said philosophically one day. ‘That fellow above,’ he pointed at the sky, ‘is a mighty dangerous scorekeeper. No matter how many goals you score, he cancels them out in the end and you’re left with a big zero.’ ‘Have you started thinking about dying?’ ‘What good would dying do? Even if a tree stops flowering or bearing fruit, even if no leaves sprout on it, it’s still better that it stays put. If nothing else, at least snakes and squirrels can find refuge in it.”
― Memon, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told

“As he climbed the stairs slowly with his head bent low, a strange feeling overcame him, a feeling of familiarity and foreignness, the lot of every exile returning home after a long absence. It is something that is not just the perceptions of the eye and ear, but is sensed all over the skin and vibrates beneath it in the rhythms of the blood, making the body break out in goose bumps and time stand still.”
― Memon, The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told