The God of Small Things Quotes

Find the perfect quote to float your boat. Shmoop breaks down key quotations from The God of Small Things.

Family Quotes

Rahel had come to see her brother, Estha. They were two-egg twins. "Dizygotic" doctors called them. Born from separate but simultaneously fertilized eggs. Estha – Esthappen – was the ol...

Society and Class Quotes

"It's a little too late for all of this, don't you think?" he said. He spoke the coarse Kottayam dialect of Malayalam. He stared at Ammu's breasts as he spoke. He said the police knew all they need...

Versions of Reality Quotes

Only Rahel noticed Sophie Mol's secret cartwheel in her coffin. (1.44)

Memory and the Past Quotes

Now, all these years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha's funny dream. She has other memories too that she has no right to have. She remembers, for instance (though...

Guilt and Blame Quotes

But worst of all, [Estha] carried inside him the memory of a young man with an old man's mouth. The memory of a swollen face and a smashed, upside-down smile. Of a spreading pool of clear liquid wi...

Innocence Quotes

By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze. (1.39)

Love Quotes

Baby Kochamma resented Ammu, because she saw her quarreling with a fate that she, Baby Kochamma herself, felt she had graciously accepted. The fate of the wretched Man-less woman. The sad, Father M...

Fear Quotes

"Take mine!" Estha said quickly, not wanting Rahel to go near the [Orangedrink Lemondrink] man. But Rahel had already started towards him. As she approached him, he smiled at her and something abou...

Identity Quotes

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, a...

Mortality Quotes

The Loss of Sophie Mol stepped softly around the Ayemenem House like a quiet thing in socks. It hid in books and food. In Mammachi's violin case. In the scabs of sores on Chacko's shins that he con...