Flirting with madness was one thing when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end its all a question of balance.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end its all a question of balance.

- Rohinton Mistry

Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure...

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

The whole quilt is much more important than any single square.

- Rohinton Mistry

World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps

- Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag, Rohinton Mistry

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

The carnage upon the chessboard of life, left wounded humans in its wake

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

The Law is a grim, unsmiling thing. Not Justice, though. Justice is witty and whimsical and kind and caring.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Did life treat everyone so wantonly, ripping the good things to pieces while letting bad things fester and grow like fungus

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

There's only one way to defeat the sorrow and sadness of life - with laughter and rejoicing. Bring out the good dishes, put on your good clothes, no sense hoarding them.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

If you ignore little things, they become big problems.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

The secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize...

- Rohinton Mistry

Time had changed the magical to mundane

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten and burnished in order to get the most out of it.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

But it was an unrefrigerated world. And everything ended badly.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Hahnji, mister, you must be patient. Before you can name that corner, our future must become past.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Independence came at a high price: a debt with a payment schedule of hurt and regret.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Make up your mind, yaar, choose one thing.' 'How can I? I'm just a human being,' he replied

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote, "All things fall and are built again, and those that build them are gay.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

But so far, the invisible line was holding, separating the potential from its realization. Strange, that invisible lines could be so powerful, thought Maneck--strong as brick walls.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

He who spits paan at the ceiling only blinds himself.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Black money is so much a part of our white economy, a tumour in the centre of the brain - try to remove it and you kill the patient.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents--a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call LIFE.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

The lives of the poor are rich in symbols.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

The secret of survival is to embrace change and to adapt. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.

- Rohinton Mistry

Time, the ultimate grandmaster that could never be checkmated. There was no way out of its distended belly.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

He spent long hours meditating on the wisdom of loving living things which invariably ended up dead.

- Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry

This was an outstanding family subject in our real life.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

When a culture vansihes, humanity is the loser.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

...the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair, to embrace change.

- Rohinton Mistry

Haunted by the unhappiness that appeared like an ugly creature to live in their home

- Rohinton Mistry

Please do not bring female visitors of the opposite sex into rooms. 

- Rohinton Mistry

It is not a question of crime and punishment -- it is problem and solution.

- Rohinton Mistry

The human face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no room for crying.

- Rohinton Mistry

But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.

- Rohinton Mistry

Like trapped animals struggling to break free. What a curse was sickness in old age. This damned Parkinson's, cruel as torture.

- Rohinton Mistry

All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay

- Rohinton Mistry

Flirting with madness is one thing. But when madness starts flirting back, its time to call the whole thing off.

- Rohinton Mistry

Time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.

- Rohinton Mistry

He wanted his noises to touch the others; friendly noises could melt hostility.

- Rohinton Mistry

Daughter-in-law is just a word. Call her anything you like. The hand of good fortune is not fussy about words.

- Rohinton Mistry

...too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.

- Rohinton Mistry

But that was always the case. People hardly ever saw their children as they really were.

- Rohinton Mistry

You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.

- Rohinton Mistry

For politicians, passing laws is like passing water," said Narayan. "It all ends down the drain.

- Rohinton Mistry

You fellows are amazing,' the sweaty cook roared over the stoves. 'Everything happens to you only. Each time you come here, you have a new adventure story to entertain us

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Soon the evening gloom would materialize, infect the fibre-filled air, drape itself over her bed, depress her from now till morning.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

When a culture vanishes, humanity is the loser.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

Hell has ways of permeating heaven's membrane.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

I almost forgot to tell you - you have the right to remain silent, but if you do, my boys at the station will process your bones to help you confess.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

He pivoted on one buttock and broke wind. Dukhi leaned back to allow it free passage, wondering what penalty might adhere to the offence of interfering with the waft of brahminical flatus.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Hell has ways of permeating heavens membrane.

- Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents - a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.

- A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry