The collection / 7 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01Undated

My religion is no way of knowing me.

Jeet Thayil / quote

02Undated

The world is on fire time is a bomb.Ten thousand years are not enoughWhen so much remains to be done

Jeet Thayil / quote

03Undated

He read because it gave him instant gratification in a way nothing else did,and as was the case with all addicts,gratification was the important thing.

Jeet Thayil / quote

04Undated

Isn't it incredible?, I said.There was nothing incredible about it, she said.I thought it was so because I spoke English, because I read books, and because my parents paid for my education and my upkeep. For me everything was surprising, the world was full of wonder, the most random idiotic occurrence was incredible because my luck made it so. For people like her, for the poor, the only incredible thing in the whole world was money and the mysterious ways in which it worked.

Jeet Thayil / quote

05Undated

Women are more evolved biologically and emotionally, that’s well knownand it’s obvious. But they confuse sex and the spirit; they don’tseparate. Men, as you know, always separate: they separatetheir human and dog natures.

Jeet Thayil / quote

06Undated

How will the ships navigatewithout stars? And then he remembered that the stars weredead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted,was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate,unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did.

Jeet Thayil / quote

07Undated

I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay

Jeet Thayil / quote