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Author: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Quotes of Author: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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  1. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ My Nine Lives: Chapters of a

    She explains that often the people who mean the most to us have to be left behind because they cannot follow us along our destined path.
    book-quotefamilyfriendsindia

  2. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    Olivia was by no means a snob but she aesthetic and the details Mrs. Saunders gave about her illness were not; also Mrs. Saunders' accent--how could one help noticing with her droning on and on?--was not that of a too highly educated person...
    book-quoteclassism

  3. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    It is strange how, once graves are broken and overgrown in this way, then the people in them are truly dead. The Indian Christian graves at the front of the cemetery, which are still kept up by relatives, seem by contrast strangely alive, contemporary
    book-quotemaintenancegraves

  4. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    The girl was particularly indignant --not only about this watchman but about all the other people all over India. She said they were all dirty and dishonest. She had a very pretty, open, English face but when she said that it became mean and clenched, and I realised that the longer she stayed in India the more her face would become like that.
    book-quotepostcolonialismindia

  5. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    The others, however, told their anecdotes with no moral comment whatsoever, even though they had to recount some hair-raising events. And not only did they keep completely cool, but they even had that little smile of tolerance, of affection, even enjoyment that Olivia was beginning to know well: like good parents, they all loved India whatever mischief she might be up to.
    book-quotecolonialismindiapaternalism

  6. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    When Indians sleep, they really do sleep. Neither adults nor children have a regular bed-time -- when they're tired they just drop, fully clothed, on to their beds, or the ground if they have no beds, and don't stir again until the next day begins. All one hears is occasionally someone crying out in their sleep, or a dog -- maybe a jackal -- baying at the moon. I lie awake for hours: with happiness, actually. I have never known such a sense of communion. Lying like this under the open sky there is a feeling of being immersed in space -- though not in empty space, for there are all these people sleeping all around me, the whole town and I am part of it. How different from my often very lonely room in London with only my walls to look at and my books to read.
    book-quotesleep

  7. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    Although the Major was so sympathetic to India, his piece sounds like a warning. He said that one has to be very determined to withstand--to stand up to--India. And the most vulnerable, he said, are always those who love her best. There are many ways of loving India, many things to love her for...but all, said the Major, are dangerous for the European who allows himself to love too much. India always, he said, finds out the weak spot and presses on it. ...Yes, concluded the Major, it is all very well to love and admire India--intellectually, aesthetically, he did not mention sexually but he must have been aware of that factor too--but always with a virile, measured, feeling. One should never, he warned, allow oneself to become softened {like Indians} by an excess of feeling; because the moment that happens -- the moment one exceeds one's measure-- one is in danger of being dragged over to the other side. ... He who loved India so much, knew her so well, chose to spend the end of his days here! But she always remained for him an opponent, even sometimes an enemy, to be guarded and if necessary fought against from without and, especially, from within: from within one's own being.
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  8. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    Olivia understood that actually they would be happier without her, doing matronly things and being comfortable with each other. But they were speaking for sake.
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  9. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Get Ready for Battle

    when I think of all our gifts, all our riches - the sky the sea, the sea, the mountains and the sun - everything is there for us to seize and enjoy, and still people sit in their little corners and moan about how they are poor... as for me, wherever I shall be and whatever I shall do, I shall always be a rich man.
    book-quotenaturewealth

  10. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Get Ready for Battle

    The world is always the same. Always beautiful: why should we let our delight in it die? The answer to this problem lies in education. If we teach our children to love everything about them - the sky, the air, water, flowers, animals - then they will keep their youthful spirit forever, whatever may happen to them in the trivial world of affairs.
    book-quotenatureeducationnature-s-beauty

  11. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ At the End of the Century: The

    You have to believe me without proof. That's what faith is - believing without proof.' They got up from the bank of stones. It was getting late, the shadows lay cool and lengthened on the grass and the tops of the trees had the stillness around them that means the end of the day and its liquidation in the setting sun. They retraced their steps back to the house where his car was parked, and when they passed through the blighted orchard, he picked up an apple for her and she ate it. She didn't even have to look; she knew it would be whole, without worms or decay.
    book-quoterelationshipsfictionshort-story

  12. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala _ Heat and Dust

    The landscape which, a few weeks earlier, had been blotted out by dust was now hazy with moisture.
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