Bharati Mukherjee Quotes

Quotes about:

• What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Teacher, Teaching, Inspire

  Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “The Middleman and Other Stories”, p.194, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  51 Copy quote

• You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa City from Calcutta that suddenly I could be a new person . . . What America offers me is romanticism and hope . . . Suddenly, I found myself in a country where

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Country, Iowa, Cities

  30 Copy quote

• The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Home, Traveler, Feels

  16 Copy quote

• I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Dream, America, Race

  "American Dreamer". www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

  15 Copy quote

• Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Fiction, Mainstream, Reader

  12 Copy quote

• There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Book, White, Fiction

  12 Copy quote

• What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Children, Poetry, Mind

  Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “The Middleman and Other Stories”, p.194, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

• I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Commitment, Emotional, Roots

  10 Copy quote

• I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Light, Different, Filters

  12 Copy quote

• Dullness is a kind of luxury.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Luxury, Kind, Dullness

  Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “Jasmine”, p.10, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  5 Copy quote

• We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It's a question of time, not motive.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Motive, Our Time

  6 Copy quote

• I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Mean, Government, Citizens

  "American Dreamer". www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

  8 Copy quote

• In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at all desirable. They are trouble. And a mother who, as mine did, has three daughters, no sons, is supposed to go and hang herself, kill herself, because it is such an unlucky kind of motherhood to have.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Daughter, Mother, Son

  "Transcript: Bill Moyers Interviews Bharati Mukherjee". "NOW" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org. June 20, 2003.

  9 Copy quote

• In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Real, India, Inattention

  52 Copy quote

• In other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  America, Doe, Agendas

  10 Copy quote

• Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one's individuality.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Roots, Individuality, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Father, Coffee, Iowa

  12 Copy quote

• My first novel, 'The Tiger's Daughter,' embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man's land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Daughter, Mother, Country

  "American Dreamer" by Bharati Mukherjee, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

  4 Copy quote

• I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money. You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted... I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Notebook, Growing Up, Couple

  "Corporate Reform Updates and a Conversation with the FCC Commissioner". Interview with Bill Moyers, billmoyers.com. May 2, 2003.

  7 Copy quote

• I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Father, Home, Writing

  "American Dreamer". www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

  9 Copy quote

• A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Modesty, Farming, Farmers

  Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “Jasmine”, p.12, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless. In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Mother, Taken, Winning

  7 Copy quote

• I am aware of myself as a four-hundred-year-old woman, born in the captivity of a colonial, pre-industrial oral culture and living now as a contemporary New Yorker.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Years, Four, Captivity

  5 Copy quote

• [On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Writing, Agendas, Exotic

  4 Copy quote

• The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Mother, Two, Childhood

  113 Copy quote

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