I finally read it. Indeed, it is a great book depicting the difficulties of creating and maintaining true and honest friendships with those raised in a different culture than ourselves. Despite our best efforts, we constantly see through lenses which shade everything with the color of our culture.
I wanted to write down and record some quotes that struck me. Some because of their connection to one of my biggest intellectual passions: identifying colonial/neocolonial/ethnocentric attitudes, or recognizing the narrow views we as outsiders place on others. I recorded other quotes because of their beautiful words and depictions of difficult life circumstances. Ideally, I would organize these quotes into respective categories. But, though categorizing has enable our species to evolve into what we are today (which plants to eat, which plants to not eat, etc.), I feel that categorizing is sometimes our biggest weakness as human beings. Plus, I'm lazy.
page 51
"We're here to do justice and keep the peace. Them's my sentiments. India isn't a drawing room."
"Your sentiments are those of a god."
"India likes gods."
"And Englishmen like posing as gods."
page 57
Then he realized what he had lost, and that no woman would ever take her place....She was gone, there was no one like her, and what is that uniqueness but love?
page 76
As for Miss Quested, she accepted everything Aziz said as true verbally. In her ignorance, she regarded him as "India," and never surmised that his outlook was limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.
page 91
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
page 121, on discussing the ethics of a British man coming to India to merely live, not to colonize. Something I've pondered myself.
"I'm delighted to be here too -- that's my answer, there's my only excuse. I can't tell you anything about fairness. It mayn't have been fair I should have been born. I take up some fellow's air, don't I, when I breath? Still, I'm glad it's happened, and I'm glad I'm out here. However big a badmash one is - if one's happy in consequence, that is some justification."
page 160
"Miss Quested, fine but foolish. You keep your religion, I mine. That is the best. Nothing embraces the whole of India, nothing, nothing, and that was Akbar's mistake."
page 289
"The first time I saw you, you were wanting to see India, not Indians, and it occurred to me: Ah, that won't take us far."
page 300
"There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart."
