R.K. Narayan > Quotes

“You cannot count on the physical proximity of someone you love, all the time.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“Thousands of persons must have said the same thing to her since, but I happened to be the first in the line.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Guide

“By the twelfth day of his fast, Raju himself has become a tourist attraction. Before an enormous crowd and an American television crew, the starving man is helped down to the drought-stricken river to pray:”
― R.K. Narayan, The Guide

“What great human forces meet and come to grips with each other between every sunrise and sunset!”
― R K Narayan

“But there are creatures hovering about waiting to disturb every holy undertaking there, who must be overcome in the same manner in the same manner as one has to conquer the five-fold evils (lust, anger, miserliness, egoism, envy) within before one can realize holiness.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“Even after the participants have vanished, every inch of earth still retains the impress of all that has gone before.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“with a few exceptions here and there, humans have monopolized the attention of fiction writers. Man in his smugness never imagines for a moment that other creatures may also possess ego, values, outlook, and the ability to communicate, though they may be incapable of audible speech.”
― R.K. Narayan, A Tiger for Malgudi

“Project is a self-contained phrase and may or may not be capable of elaboration.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Very Best of R. K. Narayan Timless Malgudi

“don’t care to bring this Nataraja”
― R.K. Narayan, Malgudi Days

“Nothing in this world can be hidden or suppressed. All such attempts are like holding an umbrella to conceal the sun”
― R K Narayan

“I realized that deep within I was not different from human beings, and I got into their habit myself and never had a moment’s silence or stillness of mind”
― R.K. Narayan, A Tiger for Malgudi

“I shun all activities and you have none. You have freed yourself from all duties which had been forced on you. And so you need not know what time of the day or what time of the week, or numbers, reckoning of before and after, when and how far; in short you don’t have to know the business of counting, which habit has made us human beings miserable in many ways. We have lost the faculty of appreciating the present living moment. We are always looking forward or backward and waiting for one or sighing for the other, and lose the pleasure of awareness of the moment in which we actually exist.”
― R.K. Narayan, A Tiger for Malgudi

“Of his views on education, he says, ‘My natural aversion to academic education was further strengthened when I came across an essay by Rabindranath Tagore on education. It confirmed my own precocious conclusions on the subject. I liked to be free to read what I please and not be examined at all.’ After”
― R.K. Narayan, The Very Best of R. K. Narayan Timless Malgudi

“I really do not mind doing it for everyone, but there are those who neither know nor learn when taught. I feel like kicking them when I come across that type.”
― R.K. Narayan, The English Teacher

“What must happen must happen; no power on earth or in heaven can change its course, just as no one can change the course of that river.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Guide

“You are everything to me: a father, leader and guru. What grieves me is that you are about to lose the position which you have attained through so much.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“आले, की तो वास सॅन्डलवूडचाच होता. त्यांनी साबणाचा सुगंध दीर्घ श्वासाने भरून घेतला आणि खिशात साबण ठेवून दिला. ‘‘आणखी काही पाहिजे?’’ पोराने विचारले. ‘‘नको. जा,’’ राव म्हणाले अन् मार्केट रोड ओलांडून ते दुसऱ्या बाजूला गेले. राव मग क्रॉस रोडने चेट्टीवार स्टोअर्सच्या पुढे गेले. तो रस्ता नंतर समांतर रस्त्याला लागला होता. तिथेच ते डावीकडे वळले; एका आवेगानेच आणि मग उजव्या गल्लीत. पुन्हा डावीकडे अन् पुन्हा मागे फिरले; पण तिथे”
― R.K. Narayan, Malgudi Days

“The television serial's immense popularity set the stage for the violent Hindu nationalist campaigns, in which Rama appeared as Rambo, his delicate features and gentle smile replaced by a muscular mien and grimace, and The Ramayana itself became a central text in the the nationalists' attempt to weld Hinduism's plural traditions into a monotheistic religion.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“He brooded for a minute on the significance of her letting him in - was it possible that she cared for him? He tried to go over all her words of the evening. Not one sentence could be interpreted romantically. Remembrance of his own words filled him with shame and disgust.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Painter of Signs

“My dear brother, you snatched away a beautiful woman, turning a deaf ear ear to her screams and appeals, and have kept her in her prison all these months.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“anything may spark off a fight if you are inclined to nurture hatred - only the foolish waste their lives in fighting”
― R.K. Narayan, A Tiger for Malgudi

“A whole civilization had come to an abrupt stalemate because its men had no better basis of living than public opinion.”
― R K Narayan

“Hunger was, after all, a passing phase which you got over if you ignored it.”
― R. K. Narayan

“When strong men commit crimes, they become heroic deeds?”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic

“There he sat with a thin broken twig at his side. The modern notions of child psychology were unknown then; the stick was an educators indispensable equipment. "The unbeaten brat will remain unlearned" said my father, quoting an old proverb.”
― R.K.Narayan

“Two and two, four; four and three, something else. Something into something, more; some more into less. Oh, God, numbers did give me a headache.”
― R.K.Narayan

“Just as the presence of a little loba (meanness) dries up and disfigures a whole human personality, so does the presence of this monster turn into desert a region which was once fertile.”
― R.K. Narayan, The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic