1
Nobody knows, nobody can ever know, not even in memory, because there are moments in time that are not knowable.Amitav Ghosh
2
I could not persuade her that a place does not merely exist, that it has to be invented in one's imagination.Amitav Ghosh
3
People like my grandmother, who have no home but in memory, learn to be very skilled in the art of recollection.Amitav Ghosh
4
One could never know anything except through desire, real desire, which was not the same thing as greed or lust; a pure, painful and primitive desire, a longing for everything that was not in oneself, a torment of the flesh, that carried one beyond the limits of one's mind to other times and other places, and even, if one was lucky, to a place where there was no border between oneself and one's image in the mirror.Amitav Ghosh
5
I was already well schooled in looking away, the jungle-craft of gentility.Amitav Ghosh
6
That unthinkable, adult truth: that need is not transitive, that one may need without oneself being needed.Amitav Ghosh
7
Need is not transitive, one may need without oneself being needed.Amitav Ghosh