38 Quotes by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

when I think of all our gifts, all our riches - the sky the sea, the sea, the mountains and the sun - everything is there for us to seize and enjoy, and still people sit in their little corners and moan about how they are poor... as for me, wherever I shall be and whatever I shall do, I shall always be a rich man.

The world is always the same. Always beautiful: why should we let our delight in it die? The answer to this problem lies in education. If we teach our children to love everything about them - the sky, the air, water, flowers, animals - then they will keep their youthful spirit forever, whatever may happen to them in the trivial world of affairs.

She explains that often the people who mean the most to us have to be left behind because they cannot follow us along our destined path.

Olivia was by no means a snob but she was aesthetic and the details Mrs. Saunders gave about her illness were not; also Mrs. Saunders' accent--how could one help noticing with her droning on and on?--was not that of a too highly educated person...

Shortly before the monsoon, the heat becomes very intense. It is said that the more intense it becomes the more abundantly it will draw down the rains, so one wants it to be as hot as can be. And by that time one has accepted it -- not got used to but accepted; and moreover, too worn-out to fight against it, one submits to it and endures.

The girl was particularly indignant --not only about this watchman but about all the other people all over India. She said they were all dirty and dishonest. She had a very pretty, open, English face but when she said that it became mean and clenched, and I realised that the longer she stayed in India the more her face would become like that.

The others, however, told their anecdotes with no moral comment whatsoever, even though they had to recount some hair-raising events. And not only did they keep completely cool, but they even had that little smile of tolerance, of affection, even enjoyment that Olivia was beginning to know well: like good parents, they all loved India whatever mischief she might be up to.

It is strange how, once graves are broken and overgrown in this way, then the people in them are truly dead. The Indian Christian graves at the front of the cemetery, which are still kept up by relatives, seem by contrast strangely alive, contemporary

There are certain people who if they are absent life becomes hard to bear.