In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.
BHARATI MUKHERJEEWe do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It’s a question of time, not motive.
More Bharati Mukherjee Quotes
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You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted… I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it’s just continuous overload.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
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I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money.
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The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
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 -
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
My first novel, ‘The Tiger’s Daughter,’ embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man’s land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
I’m sorry, this is too much work, I’m going to try applying for call center jobs. The pay is better.’
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
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 -
A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE -
What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
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[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE