52 Quotes by William Dalrymple

The old cliche of the cartridges really was terribly important. It was the issue that broke the camel's back, in every sense.

The British undoubtedly were at their very, very worst at this point in history - unbelievably violent and awful. It was through the idea of duty which came in the high-Victorian period.

Mr William, he said, in my life six times have I crashed, and on not one occasion have I ever been killed.( Bevinda Singh taxi driver from City of Djinns

...Dean Mohamet, a Muslim landowner from Patna who had followed his British patron to Ireland. There he soon eloped with, and later marries, Jean Daly, from a leading Anglo-Irish family.... In 1807 Dean Mohamet moved to London where he opened the country's first Indian owned curry restaurant, Dean Mohamet's Hindoostanee Coffee House :...He finally decamped to Brighton where he opened what can only be described as Britain's first oriental massage parlour and became "Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George IV and William IV. "

For me they go hand in hand. When I travel it makes me want to write, when I read it makes me want to travel.

There is no fire in hell,” he reported. “Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain, from this world.

What matters it, O breeze, If now has come the spring When I have lost them both The garden and my nest?

To the sick man sweet water tastes bitter in the mouth.

Whoever has built a new city in Delhi has always lost it: the Pandava brethren, Prithviraj Chauhan, Feroz Shah Tughluk, Shah Jehan... They all built new cities and they all lost them. We were no exception.