24 Quotes by Jeet Thayil

God has it in for the poets, that's obvious, but the Bombaywallahs hold a special place in his dispensation.

If a nation does not care for its past it does not care for its future; and it if does not care for its poets it does not care for anything at all.

Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well knownand it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’tseparate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separatetheir human and dog natures.

How will the ships navigatewithout stars? And then he remembered that the stars weredead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted,was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate,unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did.

Then there are the addicts, the hunger addicts, the rage addicts, the poverty addicts , and power addicts, and the pure addicts who are addicted not to substances but to the oblivion and the tenderness the substances engender. An addict, if you don't mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who has cut himself off, voluntarily, from the world's traffic and currency.

I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay.

All I did was write it down, one word after the other, beginning and ending with the same one, Bombay.

We’re waiting for a glance or a word, some acknowledgement that we are here.

God has it in for the poets, that’s obvious, but the Bombaywallahs hold a special place in his dispensation.