33 Quotes by Upamanyu Chatterjee

Far away in a field was a farmer behind two oxen, ploughing, three slow spots in a landscape of brown and green. Agastya looked at him and thought, too many worlds, concentric, and he a restless centre.

We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.

Yet one more encounter with new faces, he thought, as he watched a tree and a cloud move past in slow motion, and eventually this one would also blur into the others; all that would remain distinct, perhaps, would be a few words that only he would deem significant, or an angle of a face, which in turn his mind would link with other things, some oddity of accent, or some other words confusing time and place and people to look for a pattern, some essence.

Land is important everywhere, all kinds of land. But you have lived in cities. There you cannot sense the importance of agricultural land, its the real wealth. Each of these squares and hexagrams could be worth lakhs.

Advances don't fundamentally interest me. It sounds terribly naive, but money doesn't really mean anything to me. If a lot of money came my way, I'm certainly not going to say no. But it hasn't come my way as yet, and I'm not heartbroken.

Amidst one's daily clutter, one doesn't usually reflect on the splendour of being free because - naturally - one has to get on with the business of living.

Governance is complex, difficult, and on the whole, thankless - why ever should the Bright Young Things leave the management of their hotels, newspapers, banks, TV channels and corporations to join, like fleas on a behemoth, the government? Wherein lies the difference between the two worlds?

It's a huge headache - the more money you have, the more hassles. I find money very uncomfortable.

I need to have some depth in my characters. That's why they are all Bengalis. I can't imagine writing a book with someone called Saxena as the hero.