Ruth Prawer Jhabvala quotes

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was an American novelist and screenwriter known for her evocative portrayals of cultural encounters. Her work often explored themes of identity, displacement, and the complexities of life between East and West. She achieved international recognition, winning both the Booker Prize and two Academy Awards. Here are 15 of her quotes:

Film is not like a book; it's not a writer's baby at all. So many people have put in their talent, by that time that you feel grateful for what they've done, you don't feel possessive about it in any way.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

One doesn't choose to become a writer. One is just born that way.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

They are no longer the same because I myself am no longer the same. India always changes people, and I have been no exception.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I like characters who are larger-than-life, whether life-loving women or the artist or guru who grabs everything. But I don't live among people like that.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

India always changes people, and I have been no exception.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I am a central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis. I am irritable and have weak nerves.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I stand before you as a writer without any ground of being out of which to write: really blown about from country to country, culture to culture till I feel - till I am - nothing. As it happens, I like it that way.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Once a refugee, always a refugee. I can't ever remember not being all right wherever I was, but you don't give your whole allegiance to a place or want to be entirely identified with the society you're living in.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Everyone is so estranged; no one is rooted. That's what I like to write about more than anything else. Everything being so mixed up. Racially mixed up, people moving from place to place, everything shifting.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I don't have it in me to write but which I hope I can go on trying for.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala