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Shashi Deshpande Quotes

A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four

A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.

Shashi Deshpande
Husband, Ninety Nine, Feet

Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real you never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces.

Shashi Deshpande
Real, Mirrors, Self
Shashi Deshpande (1989). “That Long Silence”, p.1, Penguin Books India

I don't like to call myself a feminist writer. I say I'm a feminist, but I don't write to propagate an ism.

Shashi Deshpande
Writing, Feminist, Isms

Marriage is a very strange thing. It's a very public institution, it's meant to tell the world that two people are going to live together, to declare that their children will be legal, that these children can inherit their property. It's meant for social living, to ensure that some rules are observed, so that men and women don't cross the lines drawn from them. At the same time, marriage is an intensely private affair, no outsider will know the state of some one else's marriage. It's a closed room, a locked room...

Shashi Deshpande
Children, Men, Two

Things can never be as they were. It's astonishing how we comment on change, as if change is something remarkable. On the contrary, not to change is unnatural, against nature.

Shashi Deshpande
Remarkable, Comment, Contrary
Shashi Deshpande (1989). “That Long Silence”, p.47, Penguin Books India

It's not just that life is cruel, but that in the very process of our birth we submit to life's cruelty

Shashi Deshpande
Birth, Life Is, Process
Shashi Deshpande (1989). “That Long Silence”, p.102, Penguin Books India

. . . a friend . . . showed me the kitchen in her new home with the words, "This is my office." I knew what she meant. This is where I do the work I want to, the work I like and enjoy.

Shashi Deshpande
Friendship, Home, Office

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