Well-Behaved Indian Women Quotes

“For years, we assumed ambition was a curse for us. Men could always wear it like a cape, while women were forced to tuck and hold it inside themselves.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“There’s a photo of the goddess Durga at the entrance. She’s sitting on a lion. Despite the weapons in her hands, her expression is serene. Maybe that’s true strength: maintaining a sense of peace but having all the tools to fight whatever might be hurled at you. The rest of the house is still the same: no decorations and walls that are cracked and”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“friendship has little to do with how long you’ve known someone and everything to do with faith. The faith that you can expose your rawest thoughts and still be accepted.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Lastly, thank you to every person who took the time to read this story. To anyone who has ever felt different, struggled to find a story that represents them, or been told to put their book down already, I hope this book can provide some solace.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“She pictures taking her past, putting it into a box, and shoving it under the bed. Just like that, and it would be out of sight. Gone.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“There's a unique type of rift that forms between you and everyone else when they can't figure you out or put you in a safe box.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Are they content with where their lives went? Or did they just do what was expected of them-or worse, what was safe?”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“It was the culture's fault. Women were supposed to be accustomed to nursing guilt and blame. They had to keep their husbands sane. Teach children manners. Make the perfect daal.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Maybe that’s true strength: maintaining a sense of peace but having all the tools to fight whatever might be hurled at you.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“They both owed each other more freedom: the freedom to differ in their opinions, the freedom to carry out their own decisions and accept each other’s.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“But maybe it’s okay. There is no way to have everything, despite those irritating articles about women “having it all.” There would always be conflicting desires, certain parts of herself that had to be dormant so the others could emerge.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Why can’t I?” Simran asks, her voice raising more than she’d like it to. “Maybe because I’m not your mom, Kunal. I wasn’t raised that way. Hell, you know my own mom isn’t even like that.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Simran has noticed the different ways her friends and family have tried to mention her lack of a real job or plan. There’s a unique type of rift that forms between you and everyone else when they can’t figure you out, put you in a safe box.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“You have this fixed idea in your head that I’m blind to my family’s faults, but that’s not true. I know, more than anyone else, that they can be a lot for you.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“With you and Ronak getting married, it hit me. I’d just be in the house with Dad. Or with Dad and some combination of his family. And that would be that. The idea of it made me feel trapped. Maybe I’d take the occasional break with some of the other aunties, but even they’ve become busy with grandchildren or traveling or whatever.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Everything was fine, more than fine, before he stepped into the picture,” Kunal says. “We were on our way to planning our wedding, our lives, and then he comes and shits all over it.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“She’s met plenty of Adams throughout her training, men who were kind to her face but underneath were still trying to figure her out, decide if she was worthy of respect. Men like him needed to know she wasn’t going to back down. “Adam.” She puts up her hand. “I understand everything you’re saying. And I’m doing well here.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“All of it. Your sister and brothers watching and judging every single thing I do. You refusing to see any fault with them. Because it’s just expected for me put up with all of that with a smile on my face. Even if that means working at a job that drains me. I’ve revolved my entire life around our family, and I will not listen to you say otherwise.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Simran, I don’t understand what’s gotten into you. One second, everything is fine. Normal. And the next, your engagement party is a mess, you’ve dropped out of school, you don’t have a job, you can’t give me a straight answer about Neil, and you just run away?”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Even professional ambition could become a vector for subservience. The women in his family talked behind her back, wondering why he settled. But her job, their dependence on her, kept them in line toward her face.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Simran’s grandmother: charismatic, cultured, and capable of beating the shit out of you if you offend her.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“(Nani knows about his three scandalous affairs, his mother’s irritable bowel syndrome, and where he gets his pirated DVDs, but she forgot his name.)”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“You used to be so much more—what’s the word?—brave. Regardless, now you’re just so ‘Oh, my life is hard’ and ‘I’m just going to sit here and feel sorry for myself.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“You know what happened?” “I think everyone in India and America knows. You made quite the show,” she says. “Your mom called.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Good for you, beta. Do you know how much all of us had to suffer with these men who had no idea what they were doing? It’s always better to test a man out before sealing the deal.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“They walk out of the kitchen, and she wonders why it was so much easier to be open with Neil than the man she’s going to marry.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“She can’t be the type of person who lives from happy hour to happy hour, dreads Monday mornings, and counts down the years until retirement.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Simran hears Nani turning down the volume of a Fair and Lovely commercial, the kind that used to convince she and her friends that they could be hot if their complexions were ten shades lighter. She wonders how much money and time Indian women have spent in pursuit of fairness.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“GOD, IT’S SANTA!” She would later find out that he was an Orthodox Jew.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women

“Simran’s mom and Nani used to tell her that men didn’t have to give up much for marriages to work. Women had to leave their family, join another one, put aside their own aspirations on a whim, and sever any ties from their pasts.”
― Saumya Dave, Well-Behaved Indian Women