Top 48 quotes by Bharati Mukherjee

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Bharati Mukherjee quote The picture of Mother Teres...

The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.
Bharati Mukherjee

Two , Mother , Childhood

109

In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
Bharati Mukherjee

Real , India , Inattention

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
Bharati Mukherjee

Teaching , Teacher , Inspire

You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa City from Calcutta that suddenly I could be a new person . . . What America offers me is romanticism and hope . . . Suddenly, I found myself in a country where
Bharati Mukherjee

Country , Cities , Iowa

One time you mentioned the loneliness inside of marriage and I did not understand what you were saying. Two people are together; they have come from the same place; they share the same values, the same language. Practically speaking, they are the two halves of one consciousness. They eat the same food; they have a child; they sleep in the same bed, how can they be lonely.
Bharati Mukherjee

“”. Book by Desirable Daughters, 2002.

Women , Marriage , South Asian Literature

I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It's about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
Bharati Mukherjee

"Transcript: Bill Moyers Interviews Bharati Mukherjee". "NOW" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003. Source

Energy , Soul , Father

Humor's the hardest thing to translate.
Bharati Mukherjee

Humor

The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.
Bharati Mukherjee

Home , Feels , Traveler

I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.
Bharati Mukherjee

"American Dreamer". www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997. Source

America , Race , Dream

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.
Bharati Mukherjee

Book , White , Germs

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.
Bharati Mukherjee

Light , Different , Filters

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
Bharati Mukherjee

Fiction , Reader , Mainstream

Love on the decline is hard to tell from love on the rise.” [From 'The Lady from Lucknow']
Bharati Mukherjee

“”. Book by Darkness, 1985.

It's making life important, making a single life important, rather than having a prescription for the global ills which afflict us.
Bharati Mukherjee

Writing , interview

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'
Bharati Mukherjee

Father , Coffee , Lunch

I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.
Bharati Mukherjee

Commitment , Roots , Emotional