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Before We Visit the Goddess QUOTES

Before We Visit the Goddess QUOTES

1 " Push away the past, that vessel in which all emotions curdle to regret. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

2 " I don't put much stock in remembering things. Being able to forget is a superior skill. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

3 " What is the nature of life?
Life is lines of dominoes falling.
One thing leads to another, and then another, just like you'd planned. But suddenly a Domino gets skewed, events change direction, people dig in their heels, and you're faced with a situation that you didn't see coming, you who thought you were so clever. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

4 " Ebb and flow, ebb and flow, our lives. Is that why we're fascinated by the steadfastness of stars? The water reaches my calves. I begin the story of the Pleiades, women transformed into birds so Swift and bright that no man could snare them. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

5 " She lifts her eyes, and there is Death in the corner, but not like a king with his iron crown, as the epics claimed. Why, it is a giant brush loaded with white paint. It descends upon her with gentle suddenness, obliterating the shape of the world. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

6 " But inside loss there can be gain, too,like the small silver spider Bela had discovered one dewy morning, curled asleep at the center of a rose. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

7 " My mother clutches at the collar of my shirt. I rub her back and feel her tears on my neck. It's been decades since our bodies have been this close. It's an odd sensation, like a torn ligament knitting itself back, lumpy and imperfect, usable as long as we know not to push it too hard. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

8 " Bela had thought she knew what love felt like, but when she saw Sanjay at the airport after six long months, her heart gave a great, hurtful lurch, as though it were trying to leap out of her body to meet him. This, she thought. This is it. But it was only part of the truth. She would learn over the next years that love can feel a lot of different ways, and sometimes it can hurt a lot more. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

9 " Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family's name. Wicked daughters are firebrands, blackening the family's fame. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

10 " Why are you attracted to self-sabotage? I "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

11 " She put on some music. Drum and flute, I think. She played it soft, because it was dreadfully late, a time when all good men and women, or at least the practical ones, had gone to bed. Then she danced for me. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

12 " She did understand about sacrificing values for the sake of love. It was a lesson all mothers had to memorize. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

13 " ​It felt as though someone had reached into him and was wresting out his heart. In later life his sorrows would be deep-drawn and bone-aching sad, but never like this. Perhaps only the young can feel such exquisitely intense pain. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

14 " I long to stretch out on the sofa, wrapping myself in the red quilt that's lying there. Then, with a stab, I recognize the quilt. My father had brought it back from a business trip he took to New England long ago. Ironic, how objects remain in your life long after people have exited. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

15 " So many photos, so carefully preserved. How absurdly central I'd been to my mother's life. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

16 " After that, somehow, I began fixing things in my life. Dr Berger says being close to death will do that, but I'm not sure catalysts of change can be so easily identified. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

17 " I guess that's when people call their mothers - when their world is falling apart. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

18 " Pain makes us crazy. All we want is to throw the live coal of it as far from us as we can, not thinking what we might set afire. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

19 " Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family’s name. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess

20 " Would you like to come in?" I said. My hands were sweaty. Inside my chest an ocean heaved and crashed and heaved again.
"I would," he said. I saw his Adam's apple jerk as he swallowed. "Thank you."
I was distracted by that thank you. We had moved past the language of formality long ago. It was strange to relearn it with each other. "

― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni , Before We Visit the Goddess