Midnight's children

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

death makes the living see themselves too clearly; after they have been in its presence, they become exaggerated.

'Land, yes! Love, no!' Dr Narlikar said, a little unsteadily; my father refilled his glass.

The Brass Monkey was never so furious as when anyone spoke to her in words of love

After that, for several months, mother and ayah took it in turns to open and close my lids. 'He'll learn, Madam,' Mary comforted Amina, 'He is a good obedient child and he will get the hang of it for sure.' I learned: the first lesson of my life: nobody can face the world with his eyes open all the time.

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

… And Musa, my father's old servant, who had accompanied the couple to Bombay, went off to tell the other servants, in the kitchens of the red-tiled palaces, in the servants' quarters at the backs of Versailles and Escorial and Sans Souci: 'It's going to be a real ten-rupee baby; yes, sir! A whopper of a ten-chip pomfret, wait and see!' The servants were pleased; because a birth is a fine thing and a good big baby is best of all…

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come

we are also the victims of our titles.

The world is full of love stories, and all lovers are in a sense the avatars of their predecessors.