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“Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.'

'I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.'

'Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!'

'I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads � Not that I read everything, but �'

'I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?”
― NgÅ©gÄ© wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow

“Some silences are more meaningful than thousands of long sentences.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“Now you know the pain of losing someone beloved. So, can you imagine the fate of a woman who lost three of the most loved men in her life? he asked as we were parting.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“The best way to express gratitude is to recognize the sorrows of other people.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“I didn't realize then that women like her walked on roads of embers. Their life was an endless wait for the husband kidnapped by the police, the missing brother, the son who had been imprisoned. Women who could not sleep because of the fire in their chest. Ali's mother was one of those women, battered by fate.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“I was travelling through a tunnel of light. The more I travelled, the lighter I felt. I was filled with a kind of ecstasy that I had never known before. I was moving closer and closer to the source of this beautiful light. All I wanted was to merge with that light. But suddenly I fell, like a flower falling off its stem, and returned to my body.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“It's best to be alone when you are sad. I wanted to be myself and feel my strength slowly seeping back into me.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“I wonder if the story (though not intended as such by my aunt) is a warning for me, a preview of my own life which I thought I had fashioned so cleverly, so differently from my mother's, but which is only a repetition, in a different raga, of her tragic song. Perhaps it is like this for all daughters, doomed to choose for ourselves, over and over, the men who have destroyed our mothers.”
― Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni

“You know people, they will always find something or the other to talk about. Don't take it seriously. But remember that you are going through some of the most decisive moments of your life. You are bearing a burden that is much heavier than a woman as young as you should be bearing. But if you get through these days, you win. Do what feels infinitely right. There will be thousand naysayers. Don't be tempted. Be steadfast...”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“The immensity of the infinite unknown was formidable, but for that brief moment, she did not feel small. With her sisters and a warm drink and flickering firelight, she only felt . . .

Possibility.”
― Maya Prasad, Drizzle, Dreams, and Lovestruck Things

“Honest is my policy. That's in fact my problem.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“All those other gestures of sympathy seemed a little melodramatic to me. My loss was mine and only mine. For the others, it was just a matter of words.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“You know how it is when you arrive in a new place and feel like you don't belong there? That hesitation to recon with a new geography. That knowledge that this place is not mine, these ways of talking are not mine, these silences are not mine, this etiquette is not mine.So many new things to absorb. And the place also takes a little time to accept the new person. Often you have to meet the place on its own terms. Sometimes you have to work hard to earn your little corner in it. Till that place become yours, till you find your own equilibrium, there will be a gap between you and the place.”
― Benyamin, Jasmine Days

“Our lives will be a wealth of expectation and consummation," says one character eagerly, and conspicuous consumption and concupiscent consummation intertwine in a heady celebration of the material world.”
― Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600

“It is hard to follow the course of change when you have been changing along with it. It is only when there is some degree of constancy that an observer can note the variations.4. It is hard to follow the course of change when you have been changing along with it. It is only when there is some degree of constancy that an observer can note the variations.”
― Ashish Khetarpal, Pushing Gods Out

“Avani rolled her eyes. “You read too many romance novels.â€�

“I read exactly the right number of romance novels,â€� Rani returned. “You’ll see. This family needs me.”
― Maya Prasad, Drizzle, Dreams, and Lovestruck Things

“Nothing is too much to ask for because time is so precious and fleeting and because anyone who has ever truly loved you should want the most for you and because you should want the most for yourself, too.”
― Maya Prasad, Drizzle, Dreams, and Lovestruck Things