100 Quotes by Sonali Dev

The ever-present tangle of lies tightened around her like a hunter's net. The more she pushed it away, the more it clung to her like sticky, spindly spiderwebs. But the truth had to remain hidden inside the godforsaken asylum and inside the one of silence that was Uma, Vijay, and her, and tragically enough, Vikram's mother.

People think secrets are about lies, or shame. But what secrets are really about is fear.

The last thing she wanted to dig into was herself. She wanted to bury what was insider her deeper where it would stop haunting her.

You just have to trust yourself, beta. Focus on what matters to you and don’t let it get all mixed up with what others want.

The point is that things can be repaired. That they are even more beautiful for having been repaired.

It wasn't like he wasn't capable of happiness. It was almost as if he held himself away from it just the slightest bit. He felt undeserving of it, mistrustful of it, and the unfairness of that made her want to shake some sense into his stubborn head.

Deserve was such a strange word, throwing out both blame and accolades with equal mercilessness. Society’s skewed scale for assigning a value to human beings. How many times had he been judged and found lacking? Was there ever a way to measure what anyone deserved? Or was it just another way to pretend that the randomness of the universe made sense?

You deserve to do what’s best for you.

The syntax of prejudice—threaded into conversation with the perfect pauses and facial expressions—was like ciphers and spy codes. The meaning clear to those it was meant for. To everyone else, it was harmless scribbles. Easy enough to deny.