25 Quotes by Amrita Mahale

Peace was not having anybody breathing down your neck for an answer. Not feeling two pairs of desperate eyes locked on you every waking moment. Peace was a second cup of coffee.

Who could peep into your pocket and see how much money you had? This was all the world had to go by. Dress and address.

A lack of imagination could be as crippling for the spirit as any poverty.

Doesn't looking at the sky make you think that we are all equal in the eyes of the universe? Why can't people put their small differences aside and focus on this: we are all the same, all one.

But once you were taught to reduce a person to just one piece of their identity, it took a long time to learn to fill in the other details, to make them whole again and see them as fully human. Once you sow this mystery seed, who knows what you will harvest centuries, years, or even months later?

Passion was the opposite of power. Passion was the forsaking of power. In passion, she had offered herself as a canvas for somebody else's pen, mutely receiving his designs on her skin. In passion, she had allowed herself to dream of a new name, adding his name to her own, chopping off a part of herself as an offering. In passion, she had cut herself up, lost herself, lost days, lost months.

She had believed that the heart was like a house and when you let someone in, they were only a guest. You could entertain them in the living room while keeping the bedrooms shut. You could limit their footprint to a minimum.

Salt makes grey, salt makes red. Salt heals, slowly.

Perhaps she had got it all wrong, perhaps no new love could mend what an old love had torn apart, that passion was an unstable force and perhaps her life did not have to be a constant state of flux. These pages had weathered love and loss. Now, she said to herself, it was in her hands to write here a new story.