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Quotes From Here And There

Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Dylan Thomas
I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
Eddie Cantor
It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.
Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
e e cummings
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Eyler Coates
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Gustave Flaubert
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Going to the Opera is like making love; we get bored but we come back.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
John Steinbeck
Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Leonard Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Paul Sweeney
You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
Peter Altenberg
I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
Robert Frost
In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.
Satchel Paige
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
Thomas Mann
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
V S Naipaul
The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and ask the next question, and the next.

My Personal Library


A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Friday, January 4, 2008 by Abhinav

I'm almost through with Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance set in the Emergency (1975-1984). It is pure Bombayana. Written with a mix of caustic insight and deep compassion, Mistry's prose is the most natural ever. He writes like an insider - hell, even makes Rushdie's work feel like an outsider's voice. Rushdie writes in awe; his love for the city is almost filial. Mistry on the other hand knows Bombay for the bitch that she is; his depiction of the city is steeped in amorous love with the whiff of loss looming large over the milieu he creates. It is for this reason that Mistry can write with greater acceptance and credibility of the city's tragedies than Rushdie. I'm on a happy track with the last hundred pages or so of the tome to finish. The whiff of impending tragedy is looming large. Let's hope I get through.

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5 Comments:

    On January 7, 2008 at 1:07 AM Sarah Hina said...

    Your book reviews always make me want to click over to Amazon, Abhinav! I really liked your comparison to Rushdie, here. I think I would prefer the more pointed realism of Mistry, too.

    On January 7, 2008 at 5:47 PM Abhinav Maurya said...

    Now that's a compliment! ;-)

    I absolutely adore Rohinton for his splendid work (and sometimes his sentimentality too). It's such a tragedy he has not won the Booker after being nominated three times, one of which is for A Fine Balance.

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    On February 5, 2008 at 2:37 PM Ishtaar said...

    I remember craving watermelon juice for the longest time after reading this book. And *SPOILER* trying to convince myself that he doesn't kill himself at the end. Sniff. He doesn't, doe he?
    Haven't read any of Rohinton's other work though... What do you recommend?

    On February 9, 2008 at 11:07 AM Abhinav Maurya said...

    It was so sad that Maneck had to go in the end. Though I understood the reason why Rohinton decided to do that, I didn't have the heart to write a review. RM remains perhaps the most adept Bombay writer at breaking you heart in a clean and neat way, so swift it doesn't even show.

    Try Tales From Firozsha Baag or Such A Long Journey. These more popular ones of his are also his best.

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