Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni quotes

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an Indian-American author, poet, and professor known for her evocative explorations of immigrant experiences and women's lives. Her acclaimed novels, such as "The Mistress of Spices" and "Sister of My Heart," blend myth, magic realism, and contemporary issues. She continues to inspire readers worldwide with her vibrant storytelling and cultural insights. Here are 20 of her quotes:

Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path, All they do is trip you up.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so, only I never knew it!

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

The heart itself is beyond control. That is its power, and its weakness.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

That's how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Above us our palace waits, the only one I've ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming again like fireflies in a summer evening.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified. 'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

But maybe as I get older, I begin to see beauty where I least expected it before.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you. . . . But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Your childhood hunger is the one that never leaves you.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Everytime i have turned the page he re-enters my life as awkward as postscript.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

There was an unexpected freedom in finding out that one wasn't as important as one had always assumed!

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

... this time I didn't launch into my usual tirade. Was it a memory of Krishna, the cool silence with which he countered disagreement, that stopped me? I saw something I hadn't realized before: words wasted energy.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I spent childhood vacations with my grandfather in a little village three hours outside of Kolkata. At night, he would bring me and my cousins together, light a kerosene lamp, because there was no electricity, and tell us wonderful stories from folktales, fairy tales, and epics. Sometimes he'd tell family stories, or make up ghost stories. I enjoyed it at the time but didn't realize what an effect it would have on me. It made me understand the power of storytelling, and how, through stories, so much is communicated and passed on from generation to generation.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

It has definitely influenced my writing. I put appropriate Bengali words in among the English ones because I want that weaving of languages. Concepts from Bengali are sometimes difficult to translate but I want them to have a role. It's complicated. How do you bring them in without putting little explanatory notes? How do you write so you are at once inviting everyone into your book but also creating a special texture that people of your language background would especially appreciate?

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni