“The end of an ox is beef, the end of a lie is grief.”

“Marriage needed the absurdity of values.”

“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.”

“The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation. Lovers often choose the first with the same illusory wisdom that makes people choose to die later than now.”

“Free love,Ayaan knew, is an enchanting place haunted by demented women”

“That perilous distance from where the face of any woman would look ugly.”

“The city is full of terrible actors. That is what historians never say about Madras, it is filled with hams.”