Top 160 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I am turmeric who rose out of the ocean of milk when the devas and asuras churned for the treasures of the universe. I am turmeric who came after the nectar and before the poison and thus lie in between.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

52. “I broke the first rule, the unwritten one, meant not just for warriors but all of us: I took love and used it as a balm to soothe my ego.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

53. “But when I see Sudha, her face bright with a simple, generous joy, the walls I’d set up so carefully collapse around me like a house of cards. Inside my heart it feels like a wet, new rain. In spite of all my insecurities, in spite of the oceans that’ll be between us soon and the men that are between us already, I can never stop loving Sudha. It’s my habit, and it’s my fate.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

54. “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

55. “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

56. “I couldn’t control what was done to me. But my response to it was in my control.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

57. “Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, our lives. Is that why we’re fascinated by the steadfastness of stars? The water reaches my calves. I begin the story of the Pleiades, women transformed into birds so Swift and bright that no man could snare them.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

58. “Girls have to be toughened so they can survive a world that presses harder on women.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

59. “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

60. “Chili, spice of red Thursday, which is the day of reckoning. Day which invites us to pick up the sack of our existence and shake it inside out. Day of suicide, day of murder.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

61. “Love. There’s no argument, no matter how strong, that can overcome that word.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

62. “Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

63. “For isn’t that what our homes are ultimately, our fantasies made corporeal, our secret selves exposed? The converse is also true: we grow to become that which we live within.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

64. “I saw something I hadn’t realized before: words wasted energy. I would use my strength instead to nurture my belief that my life would unfurl uniquely.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

65. “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

66. “I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn’t understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

67. “But Krishna was a chameleon.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

68. “But where love and sorrow bind people together, goodbyes are not so easily said. We were about to discover that.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

69. “He never wasted time, Ram, especially on things he believed he couldn’t change.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

70. “Even the wisest don’t know what’s hidden in the depths of their being.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

71. “Distance is a great promoter of harmony:.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

72. “How innocent we’d been, thinking that if only we willed something hard enough, it would come true.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

73. “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

74. “Isn’t that what truth is? The force of a person’s believing seeps into those around him – into the very earth and air and water – until there’s nothing else.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

75. “In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess’s glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti – no fancy modern clothes for him. That’s one of the things I admire about him, how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

76. “All of us groping in caverns, our fingertips raw against stone, searching for that slight crack, the edge of a door opening into love.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

77. “Buddha’s Wife tells a fascinating story, little known in the west, about the woman whom Buddha left behind. Gabriel Constans focuses the reader’s attention on the strong and complicated women who surrounded Buddha and makes us re-think the nature of spiritual life.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

78. “The mark of a wise man is that he changes his mind when he sees mistake.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

79. “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

80. “Ah, now I have learned how deep in the human heart vanity lies, vanity which is the other face of the fear of being unloved.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

81. “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

82. “Open yourself to the sight, and it will show you what you need to know. But never attempt to bend it to your will. Never pry into a particular life that has been brought to your care. That is to break trust.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

83. “Such rulers were adored by the citizens they protected, but often their families had to bear the brunt of sacrifice.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

84. “And have you come to set me free finally, Govinda?” he asked. “Have I paid sufficiently for my theft?”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

85. “She taught me to close myself off from the sorrow of others so that I might survive.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

86. “The dream is not a drug but a way. Listen to where it can take you.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

87. “She laughed out loud. ‘I can’t teach you that,’ she said. ‘Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you’re lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have. I advise you to forget about love, princess. Pleasure is simpler, and duty more important. Learn to be satisfied with them.’ I should have believed her and modified my expectations. But I didn’t. Deep in my stubborn heart I was convinced I deserved more.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

88. “The herbs and chants weren’t working because of my anger towards Ram. In some dark part of my soul, I wanted him to suffer.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

89. “In the things we love lie clues to who we are. What we want for those we love.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

90. “You did what you were supposed to. Played your part perfectly.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

91. “That’s how love stops us when it might be healthier to speak out, to not let frustration and rage build up until it explodes.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

92. “Once I heard my mother say that each of us lives in a separate universe, one we have dreamed into being. We love pople when their dream coincides with ours, the way two cutout designs laid one on top of the other might match. But dream worlds are not static like cutouts; sooner or later they change shape, leading to misunderstanding, loneliness and loss of love.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

93. “I tried to hold on to this compassion, sensing its preciousness, but even as I reached to grasp it, it dissipated into wisps. No revelation can endure unless it is bolstered by a calm pure mind- and I’m afraid I didn’t possess that.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

94. “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

95. “I heard the laments of the people of Hastinapur, their sorrow at losing us. But I no longer required their tears. It baffled me that as a younger women I’d thought that such a thing would make me happy.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

96. “When you begin to weave your own desires into your vision, the true seeing is taken from you.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

97. “It’s a rare man – and an even rarer ruler – that can remain untouched by jealousy in the face of a peer’s sudden prosperity.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

98. “Or perhaps it is just that desire lies at the heart of human existence. When we turn away from one desire, we must find another to cleave to with all our strength – or else we die.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

99. “My mother clutches at the collar of my shirt. I rub her back and feel her tears on my neck. It’s been decades since our bodies have been this close. It’s an odd sensation, like a torn ligament knitting itself back, lumpy and imperfect, usable as long as we know not to push it too hard.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

100. “Hope not built on reason brings disappointment only.”

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni