Manu Joseph Quotes & Sayings

At the reception, he realized that he had left something in the car. He went back, muttering to himself. Lavanya was sitting inside the car with a calm expression on her face. 'You can open it from inside,' he told her. 'I know,' she said, as she struggled out of the vehicle. 'Then why didn't you do it?' he asked angrily. 'Why are you being dramatic?' 'I am being dramatic?' 'I know I forgot you in the car. So?' 'So nothing. It happens. Did I say anything? — Manu Joseph

The most foolish description of the young is that they are rebellious. The truth is that they are a fellowship of cowards. — Manu Joseph

Most of you will probably never really discover anything. You may not contribute anything to the great equations that describe the universe to the world. But you will have the good fortune of encountering people of exceptional intelligence. People who are much smarter than you. Never get in their way, never group together in disgruntled circles and play games. Respect talent, real talent. Worship it. Clever people will always be disliked. Don't exploit that to crawl your way to the top. By the laws of probability most of you are mediocre. Accept it. The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how "standards are falling". So don't mull. Just know when you've to get out of the way. Most of you will be sideshows, extras in the grand unfolding of truth. That's all right. Once you accept that and let the best brains do their jobs, you will have done your service to science and mankind. — Manu Joseph

It is an inevitability that masquerades as a decision. That is the way of a drunkard. He grants himself the dignity of choice, as if there is another option. But then is there really any choice in the world? Could it be that every human action is merely an inevitability masquerading as a human decision, life granting dignity to its addicts through the delusion of choice? — Manu Joseph

He decayed in a state of gentle happiness. — Manu Joseph

It's a myth that Sanskrit is the best language for writing computer code. Patriotic Indians have spread this lie for many years - Bill Gates — Manu Joseph

The dedication of passwords was the new fellowship of marriage. To each other, couples had become furtive asterisks — Manu Joseph

The Boy will not be a failure. Mythili knows.She has seen the generations before.The boy will make it.As his father has said,he does not have the option of failure.He will crack atleast one entrance exam,and he will one day have a nice house in a suburb of San Francisco,or in a suburb of a suburb of San Francisco.He will find a cute Tamil Brahmin wife and make her produce two sweet children.He will drive a Toyota Corolla to work.And there,in the conference room of his office,he will tell his small team,with his hands stretched wide in a managerial way,'We must think out of the box — Manu Joseph

But then the fate of shy people is that all of their fears usually come true. — Manu Joseph

The city is full of terrible actors. That is what historians never say about Madras, it is filled with hams. — Manu Joseph

That men, in reality, did not have friends in other men. That the fellowship of men, despite its joyous banter, old memories of exaggerated mischief and the altruism of sharing pornography, was actually a farcical fellowship. Because what a man really wanted was to be bigger than his friends. — Manu Joseph

How unfortunate is the guy who does not live in the extravagant memory of an infatuated young woman. — Manu Joseph

So what is truth, then ?'
'Truth is a successful delusion. — Manu Joseph

After riding like a moron all over the place, observe the face of an Indian when he crashes. He is stunned. — Manu Joseph

Scientists want to search for alien signals because that's what gets them publicity. They are like Jesus Christ."
"Jesus Christ?" Nambodri asked, with a faintly derogatory chuckle.
"Yes. They are exactly like Jesus Christ. You know that he turned water into wine."
"I've heard that story."
"From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because if he had gone to someone's house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier. He knew, Jana. He knew making water into wine was a more popular thing to do. — Manu Joseph

Ambition is the capacity for unhappiness. — Manu Joseph

From the comfort of distance, [Non resident Indians and Kashmiris] financially and emotionally support ideologies whose consequence they don't have to face. They are not just a nuisance. As a collective they are dangerous. When men capable of murder receive the affection of engineers and MBAs, it makes them potentially far more lethal. — Manu Joseph

It is a misfortune to be in the presence of a writer, even a failed writer, to be seen by him, be his passing study and remain in his corrupt memory. It is like the insult of a corpse on the road by a war photographer. — Manu Joseph

At the heart of memory, is the stillness of time. — Manu Joseph

She was reminded of her mother's prophecy one day before her wedding that - he will go completely mad one day. But he seems so happy she told her mother. Its not only the sad who go mad, my child, its also the happy, her mother said.
- Serious Men — Manu Joseph

The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation. Lovers often choose the first with the same illusory wisdom that makes people choose to die later than now. — Manu Joseph

Free love,Ayaan knew, is an enchanting place haunted by demented women — Manu Joseph

Unni had a very serious problem. He had this artistic objection to the heart symbol. He said it doesn't look like a heart, he said it looks more like a read arse. — Manu Joseph

He stares at the open textbook for hours and is distracted by the pain of the parallelogram, which is slanted for ever. His nails scratch the page to straighten its tired limbs. It affects him, the great arrogance of the Equilateral Triangle, the failed aspiration of the octagon to be a circle, the eternal suffocation of the denominator that has to bear the weight of the unjust numerator, the loneliness of Pluto. And the smallness of Mercury, always a mere dot next to a yellow sun. In this world, there is no respect for Mercury. — Manu Joseph

You acquire a new kind of intelligence when you stay away from instant news. — Manu Joseph

Strong people write bad stories. — Manu Joseph

Men do things. We can't help it. That's all there is to it. As you will discover in time, the primary choice every man has to make is whether he wants to be himself or if he wants peace. — Manu Joseph

The distinction between a delusion and a lie is the very difference between a successful saint and a fraud. — Manu Joseph

Yes, Yes. Indians were the oldest civilization on Earth, the greatest, the best. And only Indians had culture. Others were all dumb nomads and whores. — Manu Joseph

There is a crowd outside the main door, talking softly about the death as if they don't want the dead man to know that he is gone. — Manu Joseph

It is a moment that has no meaning. It is as if the tired charade of human life with its great pursuits and history and wounds and deep convictions has collapsed, and the world has been suddenly revealed as a place that has no point, that does not need the hypothesis of meaning to explain its existence. — Manu Joseph

The extraordinary triumph of the cellphone among India's poor stemmed from its ability to enable a most mundane human need, which is to chat with other people. And when the poor chat, it is not always about curing a child of diarrhea. — Manu Joseph

My love, I feel terrible without you. It is like being with you. — Manu Joseph

He was wearing a blue tracksuit that had a white tick mark embroidered at the hip, as if he approved of something. It — Manu Joseph

No matter what the delusions are, parents do not really know their children — Manu Joseph

Morality was probably the invention of unattractive men. Whom else does it benefit really — Manu Joseph

Fight, Thoma, put fight. — Manu Joseph

Marriage needed the absurdity of values. — Manu Joseph

A mysterious character of UFOs is that they are sighted only in the First World,' she said, 'and no alien conquest of Earth begins until the mayor of New York holds an emergency press conference. When Mars attacks, it attacks America. — Manu Joseph

Happiness as an inescapable fate, not a pursuit. — Manu Joseph

He said every delusion has an objective, and the objective of a delusion is not merely to colonize one brain but to transmit itself to as many brains as possible. That is the purpose of every delusion, that is how a delusion survives, that is how it succeeds. By spreading, maximizing its colony, like a virus. According to Unni, any philosophy that can be transmitted to another person is a delusion. If two people believe in the same idea of truth, it is a delusion. Truth is a successful delusion. — Manu Joseph

He tried to look at her face in the hope that she was not pretty. Beautiful women depressed him. They were like Mercedes, BlackBerry phones and sea-view homes. — Manu Joseph

Thoma is amazed at the telepathy of women. How miraculous it is for one woman to do something weird and another woman to extract its intended meaning. — Manu Joseph

The Untouchables, in modern times, had won the useless right of being touched by the high caste, but they remained the poorest in the city. Every — Manu Joseph

She walked to the door and looked at him with an affection that was at once hopeful and melancholic. Like light was both particle and wave. — Manu Joseph

It is the misanthrope who alone has clarity.By standing outside the huddles of man,he sees a lot,and what he often sees is the evidence that people are not as smart as dogs think they are.And he wants to see it time and again.In the fog of ambiguities and mysteries,he desperately searches for truths because truth usually shows humanity in a poor light — Manu Joseph

And all our gods are not lies. They existed. All our gods, from the beginning of time, have been men with psychiatric conditions. And their delusions were so deep, they passed them on. — Manu Joseph

The tragedy of mediocrity is that even mediocre people shake their heads and mull over how standard are falling.
- Serious Men — Manu Joseph

A man cannot be exactly the way he wants to be and also dream of keeping his wife — Manu Joseph

It is in the nature of love to be disproportionate with both rewards and retributions. — Manu Joseph

Somehow I feel that a person who thinks he has discovered the absolute truth will not be someone I know. — Manu Joseph

From what Ayyan had heard of the battles of the Brahmins, it would be bloodless but brutal. They would fight like demons armed with nothing more than deceit and ideals - another form of deceit among men from good families. — Manu Joseph

The true nature of sorrow is boredom. — Manu Joseph

And one day, very soon in fact, Adi would be an adolescent. An adolescent son of a clerk. A miserable thing to be in this country. He would have to forget all his dreams and tell himself that what he wanted to do was engineering. It's the only hope, everyone would tell him. Engineering, Adi would realize, is every mother's advice to her son, a father's irrevocable decision, a boy's first foreboding of life. — Manu Joseph

In the twilight that was now the colour of dust, in the fury of horns that was a national language because honking had telegraphic properties.. — Manu Joseph

The Magna Carta is an early reminder of the crucial difference between freedom and liberty. Liberty is freedom that is unique to humans, it is guaranteed by law. All animals are free, but in a system of humans total freedom is anarchy. Humans have thrived by letting a dominant authority regulate freedom. Liberty is a freedom that the authority has granted or has been persuaded to grant. For centuries, the state and the people have negotiated, peacefully and violently. — Manu Joseph

If two people believe in the same idea of truth, it is a delusion. — Manu Joseph

Ayyan had developed the habit of reading anything in front of him, even if it was something he did not really understand, because he believed that one reason why everybody was here, including the sons of municipal sweepers, was to collect as much information as possible before dying with a funny look on the face. — Manu Joseph

On the pavement by the side of the road was planted a banner two storeys high. Even in the blow-up the celebrity appeared stunted. He stood in a safari suit, his palms joined in greeting. His face was a light pink because poster artists did not have the freedom to paint his face black. His little mop of hair was spread thinly over an almost flat scalp. And his thick moustache had sharp edges. Just above his head was an English introduction in large font - DYNAMIC PERSONALITY. A thinner line that followed said he was the honourable Minister S Waman. It seemed appropriate that it was at Waman's black shoes the author took credit, in Marathi and in diplomatically-chosen small font - 'Hoarding Presented by P.Bikaji. — Manu Joseph

Operna did not understand this habit of Indian men. If they could letch at her so overtly, they might as well ask her directly who she was. Why did they always turn to someone else and say, 'Wont you introduce us?' It was so pathetic. — Manu Joseph

That a mystery must have a resolution is obviously not a requirement of nature. It is, in fact, another deceit of writers — Manu Joseph

What is it about life that even Ousep Chacko believes it is a lottery? — Manu Joseph

The end of an ox is beef, the end of a lie is grief.
- Serious Men — Manu Joseph