{"author":"Rohinton Mistry","author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry","total_quotes":41,"quotes":[{"text":"The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["circumstance","loneliness"],"id":1819,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"Multilate. Ha Ha Ha,' said Nusswan, avuncular and willing to pretend it was a clever joke. 'Its all relative. At the best of times, democracy is a see saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs. To fight fascism and other evil forces threatening our country, there is nothing wrong in taking strong measures. Especially when the foreign hand is always interfering to destabilize us. Did you know the CIA is trying to sabotage the Family Planning Programme?","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["a-fine-balance","democracy","emergency","xenophobia"],"id":2229,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["corrupt","injustice","police","unjust"],"id":11947,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["cruelty","hypocrisy","people","vulnerable","world"],"id":26804,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"Curious, he thought, how, if you knew a person long enough, he could elicit every kind of emotion from you, every possible reaction, envy, admiration, pity, irritation, fury, fondness, jealousy, love, disgust. But in the end all human beings became candidates for compassion, all of us, without exception...And if we could recognize this from the beginning, what a saving in pain and grief and misery.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["compassion","thought-provoking"],"id":28189,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"The future was becoming past, everything vanished into the void, and reaching back to grasp for something, one came out clutching - what? A bit of string, scraps of cloth, shadows of the golden time. If one could only reverse it, turn the past into future, and catch it on the wing, on its journey across the always shifting line of the present ...","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["future","journey","life","memories","past","present","void"],"id":42243,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten and burnished in order to get the most out of it.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["artistry","life","philosophical"],"id":50290,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["change","distance","inspirational"],"id":70838,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"But the artist began to have misgivings as the wall underwent its transformation. Bigger than any pavement project he had yet undertaken, it made him restless. Over the years, a precise cycle had entered the rhythm of his life, the cycle of arrival, creation, and obliteration. Like sleeping, waking and stretching, or eating, digesting and excreting, the cycle sang in harmony with the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. He learned to disdain the overlong sojourn and the procrastinated departure, for they were the progenitors of complacent routine, to be shunned at all costs. The journey -- chanced, unplanned, solitary -- was the thing to relish.Now, however, his old way of life was being threatened. The agreeable neighborhood and the solidity of the long, black wall were reawakening in him the usual sources of human sorrow: a yearning for permanence, for roots, for something he could call his own....","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["artist","cycle","journey","routine","sorrow"],"id":97022,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"},{"text":"He winced at her efforts to mollify him. Why didn't she say she was disgusted with his behaviour, with his long absence, his infrequent superficial letters? And if she did say it - would he defend himself? Would he give reasons, try to explain how meaningless every endeavour seemed to him? No. For then she would start crying again, he would tell her to stop being silly, she would ask for details, and he would tell her to mind her own business.","author":"Rohinton Mistry","tags":["family","inspirational","life","love","parents"],"id":101916,"author_id":"Rohinton+Mistry"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":41,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}