17 Quotes by Tanaz Bhathena

I finally recover use of my voice. “It wasn’t your fault, Rajkumar . You didn’t do anything.”“No, I didn’t. And with my silence, I became an accomplice.

Shhhhhh, my girl. We are from Ambar, a land named after the sky itself. Our souls are linked to the goddess who lives up there, the goddess who gave birth to Asha, our first queen. We do not share the same sort of affinity to the gods and the goddess from the other kingdoms , or to human prophets.

We’re all servants in a way. The king must serve his subjects and so must the other members of the royal family. The Code of Asha states that to coexist, we must honor and depend on each other, magi and non-magi. It’s what the old high priests —the great acharyas of Ambar— called a sandhi or a joining.

When we talk about violence, we do not always talk about death, I said. Sometimes violence can mean the difference between life and death. The difference between waiting for someone's help and continuing to suffer abuse, and helping yourself when you most need it.

It is strange, I thought, how we always recognize our best memories in hindsight.

Memories, Pappa had said, can be like splinters, digging into you when you least expect them to, holding tight and sharp the way wood did when it slid under a fingernail.

You can control people if you know their language. You can shut them up.

Stories, my father used to say, would always change the course of our lives, the greatest ones being retold over and over again not to simply convey morals or life lessons, but to bring people together. That is the reason a storyteller tells stories, he declared even during his last days, while lying in the hospital bed. So he can connect to another human being!

In this world, no one cares if you are starving to death. No one even looks at you. They only care when you start doing things they don't approve of - like dancing with your clothes off.