Quote

Saeed quickly found employment at a Banana Republic, where he would sell to urban sophisticates the black turtleneck of the season, in a shop whose name was synonymous with colonial exploitation and the rapacious ruin of the third world.

Kiran Desai

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Kiran Desai
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: September 3
Author
Novelist
Writer
New Delhi district
World
Seasons
Shops
Colonial
Quickly
Republic
Banana
Whose
Ruins
Bananas
Name
Season
Exploitation
Names
Sell
Shop
Turtleneck
Black
Sells
Ruin
Turtlenecks
Found
Third
Urban
Rapacious
Would
Thirds
Employment
Synonymous

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If you write a lovely story about India, you're criticized for selling an exotic version of India. And if you write critically about India, you're seen as portraying it in a negative light - it also seems to be a popular way to present India, sort of mangoes and beggars.
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Writing, for me, means humility. It’s a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you’re writing honestly.
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Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for another human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion.
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Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.
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A man wasn't equal to an animal, not one particle of him. Human life was stinking corrupt, and meanwhile there were beautiful creatures who lived with delicacy on the earth without doing anyone harm. We should be dying. the judge almost wept.
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Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?
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When I was growing up the publishing world seemed so far away. When my mother wrote a book, she would look up the address of publishers on the backs of the books she owned and send off her manuscript.
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When he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, My father died, my father died. My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of?
Kiran Desai
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A journey once begun, has no end
Kiran Desai
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The Indian diaspora is a wonderful place to write from and I am lucky to be part of it.
Kiran Desai
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Why couldn't she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else's life.
Kiran Desai
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This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere they could never be in a single existence at one time. How wonderful it was going to be to have things otherwise.
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The publishing world is very timid. Readers are much braver.
Kiran Desai
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I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers.
Kiran Desai
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New York is a lovely city. It is an easy city to go back to and an easy city to leave. Every time I go there I immediately make travel plans.
Kiran Desai
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In India, if you are from the elite, dogs are extremely important. The breed of the dog indicates your wealth, that you are westernized. The cook, another human being, is on a much lower level than your dog. You see this all the time.
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I don't think you can write according to a set of rules and laws every writer is so different.
Kiran Desai