“He decided there was no point in telling her he'd looked in the fridge and seen none of these things. There'd just be some variation of his mother's standard crack about Male Refrigeration Blindness Syndrome.”

“It's the standard-issue Indian male syndrome. Mothers and sisters on a pedestal on the one hand, and loose women and prostitutes below the boot on the other. And me, a good Marathi girl like his sisters, consorting with all of you wastrels and worse. Too confusing for him.”

“She had her own barometer for knowing when a man was getting too close: as soon as he felt comfortable enough to help himself to something in her refrigerator, he was history....Filching leftover was simply too domestic for her to stomach. A man might as well say, "I'm hungry and I'm taking your food, woman." First he'd be foraging for food in the fridge, next he'd be expecting her to cook for him, replace buttons on his shirt, and give up her job to have babies that looked like him.”

“You could tell a lot about a person from their fridge magnets, not that he'd thought much about them at the time.”

“What he'd never understood about men in his position, in all the books he'd read and movies he'd seen about them, was clearer to him now: you couldn't keep expecting wholehearted love without, at some point, requiting it. There was no credit to be earned for simply being good.”

“As they went by Assail, the male was watching them. "Jesus, he really is blind"Wrath pulled up short and unsheathed his dagger, pointed it directly into the guys face. "But my hearing is just fine”