# Friend of My Youth - Author: [Amit Chaudhuri](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri.md) - Quotes: 22 - Book page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth ## Quotes > An hour's a symbolic duration. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/an-hours-a-symbolic.md) > The eye covers distances in a second. It lusts for freedom. Looking out, I often wanted to be free - not of home, but of the city. The eye (if it's gazing upon something it's unhappy with, as I was) might see nothing. Looking up is different. I have the freedom I then wanted. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/the-eye-covers.md) > I treat vegetarianism as a phase that might any second end without warning. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/i-treat-vegetarianism.md) > Photographers are the new Brahmins: we have no volition when they rule us. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/photographers-are-the.md) > Some books I buy for their title, others for brevity. I love short books - the way you know from the first page that it's going to end. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/some-books-i-buy.md) > I ... take a selfie with him; two, to be safe. My lips are parted, as if I'm poking a dead thing to see if it'll come to life; it's the phone I'm attempting to keep at a distance. He's smiling faintly, as if amuse by some exotic piece of wildlife. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/i-take-a-selfie.md) > He has a traditional shopper's DNA, an eye for freshness and appearance, and a consistent sense of a home to go back to. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/he-has-a-traditional.md) > I lie back. They've "refurbished" the room. I loathe the word, its blunt sound (as if someone with a cold were trying to say "furnished"), and don't say it without irony. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/i-lie-back.md) > At the conclusion of Hollywood disaster movies and epics, time moves backward, piecing together like a jigsaw the elements that had come apart. The Titanic resumes its journey; Russell Crowe is reunited with his murdered wife and son. It's not a happy ending; it's a convention created for the purposes of an impossible sense of uplift at the end of death and tragedy: the happy beginning. Technology makes Hades unnecessary. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/at-the-conclusion.md) > Fantasists aren't natural readers. They grow restive easily. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/fantasists-arent-natural.md) > I love churches in Bombay...they make me think of shadow. Of footfall on stone. In England, churches preside over their habitat till they're gratuitous. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/i-love-churches.md) > Mahadev Govind Ranade. Leaving aside his air of self-importance, he looks marginally foreign, as all statues do. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/mahadev-govind-ranade.md) > Only drunks stare at statues .... I never liked the statues keeping vigil, primarily because they were too close to life. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/only-drunks-stare.md) > Frame after aluminium frame had replaced the casements. The gesture by which you push a window open was now unnecessary. ... It was as if a part of us that was air and breeze had been denied entry. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/frame-after-aluminium.md) > Each view has a history. You sense you're where others have been. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/each-view-has.md) > 'I think of Ramu. The Ramu I know and the Ramu I'm writing about have become indistinguishable. The same's true of the Bombay I'm recounting from experience and the Bombay I'm assembling through words. This is often how novels begin for me. There's a convergence. I live. Then something prompts me to write. The writing is not about life. It is a form of living. The two happen simultaneously. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/i-think-of-ramu.md) > This is what's beautiful about staying in a club or hotel: you're invisible, as is your neighbour. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/this-is-whats.md) > History is always lying before you, unnoticed: till you suddenly see it, as we do now. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/history-is-always.md) > ... "shagging" - a quasi-comical activity, like belching or farting, except it was more taboo and more necessary than these. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/shagging-a-quasi-comical.md) > There must be other leaps in life - as momentous as the "mirror stage" - that Lacan didn't mention. Some are universal; others, culturally particular. To understand that your parents are human (and not an element of the natural world), that they're separate from you, that they were children once, that they were born and came into the world, is another leap. It's as if you hadn't seen who they were earlier - just as, before you were ten months old, you didn't know it was you in the mirror. This happens when you're sixteen or seventeen. Not long after - maybe a year - you find out your parents will die. It's not as if you haven't encountered death already. But, before now, your precocious mind can't accommodate your parents' death except as an academic nicety - to be dismissed gently as too literary and sentimental. After that day, your parents' dying suddenly becomes simple. It grows clear that you're alone and always have been, though certain convergences start to look miraculous - for instance, between your father, mother, and yourself. Though your parents don't die immediately - what you've had is a realisation, not a premonition - you'll carry around this knowledge for their remaining decades or years. You won't think, looking at them, "You're going to die". It'll be an unspoken fact of existence. Nothing about them will surprise you anymore. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/there-must-be-other.md) > It's a well-known fact that no novel is taken seriously in India until a good deal of research has gone into it. This stay in the Taj will be my research. Going down the stairs will be research. So will looking out at the sea. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/its-a-well-known.md) > I'm undecided about the time we live in. This ongoing passage to oblivion. The disappearance of things you took for granted. Then there's the renaissance of things you never knew of, or presumed you'd never see again. [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/amit-chaudhuri/friend-of-my-youth/im-undecided-about.md)