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

Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel. . . Smelling of changes to come.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karma waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single world. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Russian to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain. But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end? That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed. Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price. But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach?

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

How can I forgive if you are not ready to give up that which caused you to stumble?

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I was always so, only I never knew it!

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I came from a traditional family, and it was an exciting but challenging transition to move to America and live on my own. The world around me was suddenly so different.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I came to the plain fields of Ohio with pictures painted by Hollywood movies and the works of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. None of them had much to say, if at all, about Dayton, Ohio.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

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

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

India lends itself well to fictionalization, but ultimately, it all depends on the writer's imagination.

— Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni