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


Bharati Mukherjee

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As all human beings are, in my view, creatures of God's design, we must respect all other human ...
STOCKWELL DAY Let us stop saying 'white Americans' and 'colored Americans,' let us try once and fo...
JOSEPHINE BAKER Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill
JUDE WATSON Let's head out to the ruins." - Dan Cahill
ROLAND SMITH It looks ancient," - Amy Cahill
JUDE WATSON I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the ...
MARTIN LANDAU It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill
JUDE WATSON Palm trees were fanned by a warm, light breeze, and they rolled down their windows to smell the sea.
JUDE WATSON My message is to get human beings to love God, love their neighbor and for the life of me I just don...
PHIL ROBERTSON I'm not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I'm afraid of what real human be...
WALTER JON WILLIAMS Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by...
ELIE WIESEL I think the 'New York Times' reviews overall tend to overlook popular fiction, whether you&#...
JODI PICOULT I write fiction not for my readers and not for myself. I write fiction for the sake of those odd her...
NICHOLAS TRANDAHL We can't just have mainstream behavior on television in a free society, we have to make sure we ...
JERRY SPRINGER Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by...
ELIE WEISEL Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is ficti...
JEAN M. AUEL I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people ...
MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX When you label somebody and put them in a box, then you put the lid on the box, and you just never l...
STEPHANIE BEATRIZ I don't know if my work is a concerted effort to make kids sad! But life and death go hand in ha...
PATRICIA POLACCO There's no social realism in 'Tyrannosaur.' It's not about the social landscape or t...
PADDY CONSIDINE I have never really been fond of animals. I certainly wasn't an 'animal lover' when I be...
PETER SINGER As a feminist, just to speak to what women go through, I think women are put in a box way too often....
KETHER DONOHUE I'm definitely interested in exploring human contradictions. Contradictions are what make us hum...
EDGAR RAMIREZ Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The ...
HAMPTON SIDES I really believe that all of us, as Americans... we all need to be treated like fellow human beings.
JOHN LEWIS This is too much reality for a Friday.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. There are people we trust b...
STEPHEN R. COVEY As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that...
LUPITA NYONG'O I have always been mainstream. It's so weird, because I don't see it as something negative a...
AVICII Children's books are often seen as the poor relation of literature. But children are just as dem...
DAVID WALLIAMS Misconceptions about Young Adult fiction aren't new to fans of the genre. From being dismissed a...
JENNIFER ARMINTROUT I see if I can make human beings look like reptiles.
RALPH STEADMAN There are autobiographical elements to the albums, and when I write, I always reference my own life ...
JOHN LEGEND I just see myself as a human being that's concerned about life.
CHARLIE HADEN Love other human beings as you would love yourself.
HO CHI MINH We don't function well as human beings when we're in isolation.
ROBERT ZEMECKIS I don't see myself only as a member of the New Orleans community. I see myself as a part of the ...
IRVIN MAYFIELD As soon as I finished 'The Finkler Question,' I was in despair. I'd changed my English p...
HOWARD JACOBSON I hope to build a reputation as a science-fiction writer. That's the pitch. We'll see.
KURT VONNEGUT That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in ou...
AL JARREAU I don't make political work. I don't make work that criticises the state. I make as human wo...
GARY HUME Stories, as we're taught in journalism school early on, are told through people. Those stories m...
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN The moment we accept each other as Human beings, we shall find harmony.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA As a boy, my favorite show was 'Superman' and my favorite movie was 'Star Wars' - al...
J. AUGUST RICHARDS As I grow older, the idea takes increasing hold in me that we've misunderstood our own delicacy ...
ARAM SAROYAN I'm not very happy. I'm frustrated with human beings. I'm the guy who just wants to smac...
DARON MALAKIAN With the royal family, you don't want to see them as people because it takes the sheen off. They...
CLAIRE FOY I use these senses - touch, sight, feel and smell - as triggers that invite readers or propel them i...
DAVID MORRELL Readers of fiction read, I think, for a deeper embrace of the world, of reality. And that's brav...
BARBARA KINGSOLVER I just can't see myself as a trophy wife. I can't imagine not having my own life.
TAMARA MELLON I've done teaching and things like that because if you're acting, you're becoming other ...
RACHEL MINER The digitization of human beings will make a parody out of 'doctor knows best.'
ERIC TOPOL I don't view my memory as accurate or static - and, in autobiographical fiction, my focus is sti...
TAO LIN I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of pl...
TAIYE SELASI My father is a college professor and that's about the extent of my college experience. I'm s...
GABRIEL MANN There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North American...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE My students often ask me, 'What is sociology?' And I tell them, 'It's the study of t...
SAM RICHARDS The ignorant ones, not knowing My supreme natures as the great Lord of all beings, disregard Me when...
BHAGAVAD GITA I just don't see myself as the heroine in my own narrative.
CATE BLANCHETT I wouldn't define myself as the girl from 'Pulp Fiction.'
MARIA DE MEDEIROS People are very complex. And for a psychologist, you get fascinated by the complexity of human being...
DANIEL KAHNEMAN I have a fondness for historical fiction, something wondrous like 'Wolf Hall,' but I'll ...
SUE MONK KIDD People try to typecast astronauts as heroic and superhuman. We're only human beings.
EUGENE CERNAN People try to typecast astronauts as heroic and superhuman. We're only human beings.
GENE CERNAN You know, I started my career in politics in 1967. I'm not new to this. I did not just fall off ...
DENNIS KUCINICH I think music is a lifting force, I think love is the lifting force in the human condition. I think ...
DAVID CROSBY I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my reade...
ISABEL ALLENDE I always see America as really belonging to the Native Americans. Even though I'm American, I st...
NICOLAS CAGE It's only relatively recently that human beings have begun to think of happiness as not just an eart...
DARRIN MCMAHON As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same ti...
DAVID HARE I find the best way for me to show respect to other human beings is to spend as little time as possi...
CARL WHITE I'm an irredeemable urbanite. I can't imagine living more than a five-minute walk from my fe...
NICK HARKAWAY I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write ab...
JULIA GLASS We carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness...
R.J. PALACIO I think it is the duty of all human beings, as intelligent and communicative beings, to learn all th...
JONATHAN CULVER I look at my career as a body of work, not just Queens of the Stone Age records. I'm in Eagles o...
JOSH HOMME The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be.
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE I always wanted to be known as the Norman Rockwell of television, and 'Happy Days' represent...
GARRY MARSHALL Even when God chose Israel, he did not create the people of Israel as he created its human members, ...
DAVID NOVAK I'm not a representative of Pakistan; I'm just an example that Pakistanis are different from...
MOHSIN HAMID My life is at least as intricate as my readers' lives. People say that 'The Artist's Way...
JULIA CAMERON I feel like, maybe in the '90s, 'Rookie' would have been shamed for trying to reach a lo...
TAVI GEVINSON I don't understand why Europeans and South Americans can take more sophistication. Why is it tha...
JONI MITCHELL Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.
ETHEL WATERS I wanted to earn a living wage and to see something nice about me in the 'New York Times.' I...
DAVID LIPSKY Butler's novel 'Kindred' may be the book most widely read by readers outside science fic...
KAREN JOY FOWLER Human beings are very complex creatures. This desire, this greed, this love is very complex.
YASH CHOPRA About f-f-ace!" she said to the horse, flailing with her boots. "Into the barn, please. It's time fo...
PETER LERANGIS You see?" Damien leaned over his desk and spread out half a dozen charcoal sketches. "These are only...
RICK RIORDAN I use computers for email, staying current with my own website as well as finding important informat...
CLINT BLACK I live with myself. I wake up with myself, I eat, and I take a dump with myself. I don't see any...
DAMIEN RICE Our souls sparkle brightly with creative energy, our beings are as complex as the universe, and at t...
STEPHEN RICHARDS I just remember that pivotal moment when you're a young adult, and you realize that these author...
GIA COPPOLA As much as I am one for real human interaction, I also want to make a show that's entertaining a...
JAKE GYLLENHAAL I think it's a part of us as human beings that we search outside of ourselves for meaning.
NICK CAVE I'm aware of the decisions I make and the responsibility I have as a role model. I wouldn't ...
NAOMI SCOTT Human beings believe just as they breathe - in order to survive.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFóN The police pull up in back of my car and run my plates - they don't see you as you are; they see...
MARK BRADFORD I would say that most of my books are contemporary realistic fiction... a couple, maybe three, fall ...
LOIS LOWRY But as far as my work is concerned, I see no impediment, and various advantages, to being deaf.
STEPHANIE BEACHAM

More Bharati Mukherjee

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BHARATI MUKHERJEE I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never ...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two comman...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North American...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at al...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery,...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE As a bookish child in Calcutta, I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of hap...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a p...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE The United States exists as a sovereign nation. 'America,' in contrast, exists as a myth of ...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters in...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scu...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't rea...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lync...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE Lepers were a common sight all over India and in every part of Calcutta, but extending help beyond d...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE Mother Teresa's detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans' destitution and o...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of televisio...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I don't feel the depression the people who are always looking back to the '50s, to 'Fath...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, 'Novels are about individuals and especially larger...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE My mother's rules had to do with feminine deportment, so I never played hard enough to break a t...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE My first novel, 'The Tiger's Daughter,' embodies the loneliness I felt but could not ack...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute weddin...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Ind...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to th...
BHARATI MUKHERJEE You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa Cit...
BHARATI MUKERIEE We have hired an entire train and about 1,500 sex workers accompanied by intellectuals and social ac...
BHARATI DEY She (Sonia) wants to create anarchy in this country. She became a victim of her own actions.
UMA BHARATI I seek your cooperation and support for my candidate. I hope you will consider my proposal seriously...
UMA BHARATI If you take 100 breast-cancer samples, 100 types of cancer have 100 different hallmarks of mutated g...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Indian president does not determine policy. Here President is not the policy maker. In the name of t...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Some cancers are curable, while others are highly incurable. The spectrum is enormous. Metastatic pa...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I had seen cancer at a more cellular level as a researcher. The first time I entered the cancer ward...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu....
NEEL MUKHERJEE As Indians, we must of course learn from the past; but we must remain focused on the future. In my v...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers t...
NEEL MUKHERJEE In the 1980s, we were advised, why don't you follow Reaganomics or Thatcherite economics. We sai...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE I am comfortable at the height where destiny has put me.
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Cell culture is a little like gardening. You sit and you look at cells, and then you see something a...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a mod...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE In a spiritual sense, a positive attitude may help you get through chemotherapy and surgery and radi...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE My memory of my household is of one immersed in books and music. I have a very intimate relationship...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE We may have to learn to live with cancer rather than die of it. It means a big change in our mindset...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary pri...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE The history is important because science is a discipline deeply immersed in history. In other words,...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE A breast cancer might turn out to have a close resemblance to a gastric cancer. And this kind of reo...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing pa...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I'm human, we all are - all doctors are - and grieving is a natural part of medicine. As a docto...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It turns out that the very genes that turn on in cancer cells perform vital functions in normal cell...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Of course, running a coalition government in a country like India is a difficult task. More so when ...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE I have seen vast, perhaps unbelievable, changes during the journey that has brought me from the flic...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE We must recognise that in a globalised world, we cannot remain insulated from external developments....
PRANAB MUKHERJEE I think when we use 'stress', we are often using a kind of dummy word to try to fit many dif...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE We are all equal children before our mother; and India asks each one of us, in whatsoever role we pl...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at t...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE We now have poured in an enormous amount of resources into cancer. The National Cancer Institute Pro...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Our federal Constitution embodies the idea of modern India: it defines not only India but also moder...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quali...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization tha...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simpl...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Meat-fetishiser that I was, I used to find willed vegetarianism inexplicable. It was one thing to be...
NEEL MUKHERJEE Because I work on leukemia, the image of cancer I carry in my mind is that of blood. I imagine that ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Sidney Farber was a pathologist. He was called a doctor of the dead. He was a pathologist who sort o...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recen...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I come from a political family. My father was a freedom fighter. He was a prominent leader of the lo...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Only one person was conspicuously missing from the (American Society of Clinical Oncology, ASCO) par...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE A furious researcher stumbled out of one of the lab buildings and shouted, 'I'm a scientist working ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Nothing is invented; nothing is extraneous. Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, it...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I could write a thesis on the physiology of vision. But I had no way to look through the fabric of c...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE All my life’s work will drain away without ever being realized. For a sculptor, working with their...
RADHIKA MUKHERJEE What does it mean to be an oncologist? It means that you get to sit in at a moment of another person...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It could be said of him that while others chased the mirage of happiness, he was happy with being co...
NEEL MUKHERJEE The freedom fighters in India's long struggle for independence from British rule, or members of ...
NEEL MUKHERJEE The young people of India will build a strong and powerful nation, a nation that is politically matu...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE The problem with racial discrimination, though, is not the inference of a person's race from their g...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine gene...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE We know cancer is caused ultimately via a link between the environment and genes. There are genes in...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE The universe seeks equilibriums; it prefers to disperse energy, disrupt organization, and maximize c...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Why did I write 'The Emperor of All Maladies?' A 56-year-old woman with an abdominal sarcoma...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE I wouldn't call myself a 'literary critic,' just a book reviewer.
NEEL MUKHERJEE In our generation, the role models were Gandhi and Nehru. We revered them. They were venerated perso...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE No one is coming here for philanthropy. I'll welcome foreign investment, whatever the industry, as l...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE I smell a scam here.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE The PM may have said it, but the civil aviation minister has not said anything about employee's dema...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE If you are showing the example of a hi-tech Chinese airport then also show stories of their revoluti...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE We want to know what they have done with the report.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE The government will have to provide budgetary provision for the purpose...we demand that the rate of...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE The UPA Government owes an explanation to the entire working class.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE These groups try to give a religious and communal color to everything. They are trying to divert the...
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE Teaching was my transition from student life to working life. In those days, our system of education...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE Nostalgia can be extremely powerful in the right hands: think of the intense longing in the films An...
NEEL MUKHERJEE If the rise of European colonisation began in 18th century India, then the rallying cry of 'Jai ...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE I grew up in financially straitened circumstances and meat, which was expensive, was a rare thing at...
NEEL MUKHERJEE Events fall into a pattern that we can only discern retrospectively. We credit ourselves with far mo...
NEEL MUKHERJEE India introduced Britain to vegetarianism - see Tristram Stuart's excellent first book on this -...
NEEL MUKHERJEE There's a phrase in Shakespeare: he refers to it as the 'hidden imposthume', and this id...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Postwar U.S. was the world's leader in science and technology. The investment in science researc...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Robert Sandler is a child who died when he was three years old, and he is a child who was the first ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE Did you know, that one night; one moonless, clear, shining night; with the shadowy silhouettes of tr...
RADHIKA MUKHERJEE It was like dawn, and then dusk cascading over the Himalayas. First, the gradual brightening over sn...
RADHIKA MUKHERJEE Pakistan's point of view is when we have agreed to withdraw ... what is the relevance (of this) afte...
PRANAB MUKHERJEE When a disease insinuates itself so potently into the imagination of an era, it is often because it ...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It is tempting to write the history of technology through products: the wheel; the microscope; the a...
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE The approach required more persistence than imagination, but it produced remarkable results.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It was Disney World fused with Cancerland.
SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE It is a right and duty of the wise ones to purify the strong by teaching them their duties and to st...
SUBRAHMANYA C. BHARATI