Rohinton Mistry Quotes

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.

The whole quilt is much more important than any single square.

Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different.

...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.

What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.

You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them, sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success

World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps

You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

The worst part of great poverty is that you become blind to it.

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

In the end, it’s all a question of balance.

Let me tell you a secret: there is no such thing as an uninteresting life One day you must tell me your full and complete story, unabridged and unexpurgated.We will set aside some time for it, and meet. It's very important. Maneck smiled. 'Why is it important?' It's extremely important because it helps to remind yourself of who you are. Then you can go forward, without fear of losing yourself in this ever-changing world.

So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different

…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.

How can time be long or short? Time is without length or breadth. The question is, what happened during its passing. And what happened is, our lives have been joined together.

Children don't make judgments about which details are important... a child captures them all.

Loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.

If time were a bolt of cloth,” said Om, “I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily.

Time had changed the magical to mundane

I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. And there is not much percentage in the future.

In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.