Rahel Quotes & Sayings

Rahel thought of the someone who had taken the trouble to go up there with cans of paint, white for the clouds, blue for the sky, silver for the jets, and brushes, and thinner. — Arundhati Roy

Anyway, now she thinks of Estha and Rahel as Them, because, separately, the two of them are no longer what They were or ever thought They would be.
Ever.
Their lives have a size and a shape now. Estha has his and Rahel hers.
Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their separate horizons. Short creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End. Gentle half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old as Ammu was when she died. — Arundhati Roy

By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze. — Arundhati Roy

Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy."
Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.
Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over. — Arundhati Roy

Rahel never wrote to him. There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. — Arundhati Roy

Rahel's toy wristwatch had the time painted on it. Ten to two. One of her ambitions was to own a watch on which she could change the time whenever she wanted to (which according to her was what Time was meant for in the first place). — Arundhati Roy

It was raining when Rahel came back to Ayemenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, ploughing it up like gun-fire. — Arundhati Roy

Their lives have a size and a shape now. Estha has his and Rahel hers.
Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their separate horizons. Short creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End. Gentle half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old as Ammu was when she died. Thirty-one.
Not old.
Not young.
But a viable die-able age. — Arundhati Roy

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities. — Arundhati Roy

What Larry McCaslin saw in Rahel's eyes was not despair at all, but a sort of enforced optimism. And a hollow where Estha's words' had been. He couldn't be expected to understand that. That the emptiness in one twin was only a version of the quietness in the other. That the two things fitted together. Like stacked spoons. Like familiar lovers' bodies. — Arundhati Roy

Et tu, Caesar? Then fall, Caesar.
Et tu, Estha? Then fall, Estha. — Arundhati Roy

Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world — Arundhati Roy

You are never really with a person unless you are alone with him. — Rahel Varnhagen

What am I doing? Nothing. I am letting life rain upon me. — Rahel Varnhagen

On Rahel's heart Pappachi's moth snapped open its somber wings. Out. In. And lifted its legs. Up. Down. — Arundhati Roy

One beach-colored.
One brown.
One Loved.
One Loved a Little Less. — Arundhati Roy

Hope for forces which you do not yet have. — Rahel Varnhagen

It was an awe-inspiring and humbling thought, Chacko said (Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world), that the whole of contemporary history, the World Wars, the War of Dreams, the Man on the Moon, science, literature, philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge- was no more than a blink of the Earth Woman's eye.
"And we, my dears, everything we are and ever will be are just a twinkle in her eye," Chacko said grandly, lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. [ ... ] Later, in the light of all that happened, twinkle seemed completely the wrong word to describe the expression in the Earth Woman's eye. Twinkle was a word with crinkled, happy edges. — Arundhati Roy

Every thought of God is prayer. — Rahel Varnhagen

The lesson Arendt drew was that a beautiful soul is not enough, for "it was precisely the soul for which life showed no consideration." To live fully and securely, every human being needs what Arendt calls "specificity," the social and political status that comes with full membership in a community. — Adam Kirsch

Rahel's "list" was an attempt to order chaos. She revised it constantly, torn forever between love and duty. It was by no means a true gauge of her feelings. — Arundhati Roy

If only there were a river of courage, - Rahel whispered. I would bend down, cup the water in my hand and drink. — Jane Kurtz

It had been quiet in Estha's head until Rahel came. But with her she had brought the sound of passing trains, and the light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat — Arundhati Roy

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat
patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well
the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell."
Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot
death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings
a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater. — Arundhati Roy

Rahel knew that this had happened because she had been hoping that it wouldn't. She hadn't learned to control her Hopes yet. — Arundhati Roy

Suddenly Ammu hoped that it had been him that Rahel saw him in the march. She hoped it had been him that raised his flag and knotted arm in anger. She hoped that under his careful cloak of cheerfulness he housed a living breathing anger against the smug, ordered world that she raged against. — Arundhati Roy

Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. — Arundhati Roy

The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.
She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double. — Arundhati Roy

A mother is God's deputy on earth. — Rahel Varnhagen