The Forest of Enchantments Quotes

“And finally, I bless my daughters, who are yet unborn. I pray that, if life tests them—as sooner or later life is bound to do—they’ll be able to stand steadfast and think carefully, using their hearts as well as their heads, understanding when they need to compromise, and knowing when they must not.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“All the way back, I pondered the word endure, what it meant. It didn’t mean giving in. It didn’t mean being weak or accepting injustice. It meant taking the challenges thrown at us and dealing with them as intelligently as we knew until we grew stronger than them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we’re willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“I forgave you a long time ago,’ I say to Ram. ‘Though I didn’t know it until now. Because this is the most important aspect of love, whose other face is compassion: It isn’t doled out, drop by drop. It doesn’t measure who is worthy and who isn’t. It is like the ocean. Unfathomable. Astonishing. Measureless.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Motherhood taught me something new about love. It was the one relationship where you gave everything you had and then wished you had more to give.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“I couldn’t control what was done to me. But my response to it was in my control.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“You aren’t some weak-willed wench. You can control your emotions. Remember all that you’ve survived. Behave like the queen you are. No one can take your dignity away from you. You lose it only by your own actions.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“I don’t agree with you that the private life must be sacrificed for the public one. And that is the final advice that I leave for my children: my dearest boys, balance duty with love. Trust me, it can be done.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“How innocent we’d been, thinking that if only we willed something hard enough, it would come true.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Most of all, I understood that things happen to us for many complicated reasons, arising from both the past and the future.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Instead of consoling us, my mother spoke sternly. 'Pull yourselves together. Surely I've brought you up better than this? we come into the world alone, and we leave it alone. And in between, too, if it is destined, we'll be alone. Draw on your inner strength. Remember, you can be your own worst enemy - or your best friend. It's up to you. And also this: what you can't change, you must endure.'
I knew it was mostly to me that she'd spoken. 'Endure'. A word solid as a tree trunk. A good word upon which to build a life, I thought. I would learn it, and it would help me through dark times.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“It didn’t drain me as I thought it might. Instead, it invigorated me. Such was love’s magic—the giver gained more than the receiver.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Perhaps that was why I had to endure pain—because true transformation can only happen in the crucible of suffering”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“If you want to stand up against wrongdoing, if you want to bring about change, do it in a way that doesn’t bruise a man’s pride. You’ll have a better chance of success.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“This is what Kaikeyi failed to see: it’s not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we’re willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“This incident taught me that the more love we distribute, the more it grows, coming back to us from unexpected sources. And its corollary: when we demand love, believing it to be our right, it shrivels, leaving only resentment behind.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“And this is one of the final things I learn about love: it’s found in its purest form, on this imperfect earth, between mothers and young children, because there’s nothing they want except to make each other happy.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Forgive me, Sister, I said silently, you who are the unsung heroine of this tale, the one who has the tougher role: to wait and to worry.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Such is the ancient law of the universe. Of karma and its fruit. The idea of motive is irrelevant to it.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“But where love and sorrow bind people together, goodbyes are not so easily said. We were about to discover that.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“I listened mesmerized, visualizing the goddess with her divine mate, wondering if it was possible for humans to replicate this perfect relationship. Would I be blessed with such a love in my life?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Ah, love. Why had Vidhata made its nature so complex? Why did one love conflict, so often, with another?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“How entangled love is with expectation, that poison vine! The stronger the expectation, the more our anger towards the beloved if he doesn’t fulfil it—and the less our control over ourselves.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“But,’ I said, and I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice, ‘what occurred when I was alone in the darkness, under the sorrow tree, you don’t know. You don’t know my despair. You don’t even know my exhilaration, how it felt—first in the forest and then in Ayodhya—when I was the most beloved woman in creation.’ ‘I wrote what the divine vision showed me,’ he said. ‘It must have been a god that brought it to you, then, and not a goddess,’ I said drily.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Because a trained mind is your strongest ally—and an untrained one your worst enemy.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“It’s hard to tell them apart, what we bring upon ourselves and what destiny determines. They’re as difficult to disentangle as love and sorrow.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“It is unfair that one person should suffer in order for others to be blessed. If the gods were powerful enough to shape our destinies, why couldn't they just send us a good fortune untainted by sorrow?”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“it’s not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we’re willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“So this, too, was true of love: it could make us forget our own needs. It could make us strong even when the world was collapsing around us.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments

“Love was full of contradictions. Sometimes the person you loved weakened you and sometimes he or she made you a stronger person.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments