6 Quotes by Agha Shahid Ali

Srinagar hunches like a wild cat: lonely sentries, wretched in bunkers at the city’s bridges, far from their homes in the plains, licensed to kill . . . while the Jhelum flows under them, sometimes with a dismembered body. On Zero Bridge the jeeps rush by. The candles go out as travelers, unable to light up the velvet Void.What is the blesséd word? Mandelstam gives no clue. One day the Kashmiris will pronounce that word truly for the first time.

Waiting for the Revolution can be as agonizing and intoxicating as waiting for one’s lover.

They make a desolation and call it peace.

The world is full of paper, write to me

The man who buries his house in the sand and digs it up again, each evening, learns to put it together quickly and just as quickly to take it apart. My parents sleep like children in the dark. I am too far to hear them breathe.

Everyone carries his address in pocket so that atleast his body will reach home.