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 MUKHERJEEWhat was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
More Bharati Mukherjee Quotes
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What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
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A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.
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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:
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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.
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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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What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
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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.
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Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
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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.
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Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
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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.
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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.
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In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
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The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.
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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






