103 Quotes by Amitav Ghosh

That the world of today presents all the symptoms of demonic possession.

there was nothing wrong: just a touch of the back-door trots - not the flux, for there was no sign of blood, no spotting in the mustard. 'I know how to take care o' myself: not the first time I've had a run of the squitters and collywobbles.

But here, in the tide country, transformation is the rule of life: rivers stray from week to week, and islands are made and unmade in days. In other places forests take centuries, even millennia, to regenerate; but mangroves can recolonize a denuded island in ten to fifteen years. Could it be the very rhythms of the earth were quickened here so that they unfolded at an accelerated pace?

The true tragedy of routinely spent life is that its wastefulness does not become apparent till it is too late.

Just as novels have come to be seen as narratives of identity, so too has politics become, for many, a search for personal authenticity, a journey of self-discovery.

Already the sahibs have done more to keep the lower castes in their places than our Hindu kings did over hundreds of years.

The government to you is what God is to agnostics – only to be invoked when your own well being is at stake.

Is it not amazing, Puggly dear, that whenever we begin to congratulate ourselves on the breadth of our knowledge of the world, we discover that there are multitudes of people, in every corner of the earth, who have seen vastly more than we can ever hope to?

To use the past to justify the present is bad enough – but it’s just as bad to use the present to justify the past.