12 Quotes by Kamala Markandaya

We live by our labors from one harvest to the next, there is no certain telling whether we shall be able to feed ourselves and our children, and if bad times are prolonged we know we must see the weak surrender their lives and this fact, too, is within our experience. In our lives there is no margin for misfortune.

For where shall a man turn who has no money? Where can he go? Wide, wide world, but as narrow as the coins in your hand. Like a tethered goat, so far and no farther. Only money can make the rope stretch, only money.

Sometimes at night I think that my husband is with me again, coming gently through the mists, and we are tranquil together. Then the morning comes, the wavering grey turns to gold, there is stirring within me as the sleepers awake, and he softly departs.

Nature is like a wild animal that you have trained to work for you. So long as you are vigilant and walk warily with thought and care, so long will it give you its aid, but look away for an instant, be heedless or forgetful, and it has you by the throat.

Wide, wide world, but as narrow as the coins in your hand.

He sighed impatently. ‘You simplify everything, being without understanding. Your views are so limited it is impossible to explain to you.’ ‘Limited, yes,’ I agreed. Yet not wholly without understanding. Our ways are not your ways.

The truth is unpalatable.

How quickly children grow! They are infants – you look away a minute and in that time they have left their babyhood behind.

She was no longer a child, to be cowed or forced into submission, but a grown woman with a definite purpose and an invincible determination.