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We 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.

Bharati Mukherjee

I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta:
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Father Home Writing
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Inattention India Real
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 Fiction White
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.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Childhood Mother Two
Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Individuality Mind Roots
I’m sorry, this is too much work, I’m going to try applying for call center jobs. The pay is better.’
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Better Pay Sorry Work
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 MUKHERJEE

Battles Criticisms Mother Overall Toppel
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

Country Daughter Mother
But, Christ, there’s a difference between exotic and foreign, isn’t there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Believe Mean Real
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 Emotional Roots
We 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.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Motive Time
Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Fiction Mainstream Reader
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

Back Caste Class Home Selected Studying
Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Growing Running School Up
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Citizens Government Mean
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

Different Filters Light

We 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.

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We 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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