“The dedication of passwords was the new fellowship of marriage. To each other, couples had become furtive asterisks”

“Marriage needed the absurdity of values.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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..”

“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.”

“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.”