Midnight's Children Quotes

I was born in the city of Bombay... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The...

Please believe that I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. [...] In short, I am literally disin...

For the next three decades, there was to be no escape. Soothsayers had prophesied me, newspapers celebrated my arrival, politicos ratified my authenticity. I was left entirely without a say in the...

Smile, smile, it is your history I am keeping in my head. Once it was set down in old lost books. Once I knew where there was a grave with pierced feet carved on the tombstone, which bled once a ye...

He also felt - inexplicably - as though the old place resented his educated, stethoscoped return. Beneath the winter ice, it had been coldly neutral, but now there was no doubt; the years in German...

This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history. (1.1.5)

To see Naseem weeping into a pillow. She has been weeping ever since he asked her, on their second night, to move a little. 'Move where?' she asked. 'Move how?' He became awkward and said, 'Only mo...

('Her?' Padma guesses. 'That hussy is your mother?' But there are other mothers-to-be, other future fathers, wafting in and out through the silence.) (1.4.7)