Skip to content

The most moving form of praise I receive from readers can be summed up in three words: I never knew. Meaning, I see these people (call them Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese) around me all the time and I never knew they had an inner life.

— Bharati Mukherjee A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: No source given
Work: A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory, 1991
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

More by Bharati Mukherjee

my true material is immigration. In other words, transformation not preservation.

A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)

My theme is the making of new Americans

A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)

All Bharati Mukherjee quotes →

More quotes by Bharati Mukherjee

Literature can help bring about change of hearts and minds and then put pressure for political, legislative change. (2007)

Novelists aim for fullness of catharsis, not a political pamphlet. (1996)

An author focuses on a few individual characters, and hopes that a larger frisson of emotion and revelation comes across to the reader. (1996)

I was born into a class that did not live in its native language. I was born into a city that feared its future, and trained me for emigration.

A Four Hundred-Year-Old Woman" in The Writer on Her Work: New Essays in New Territory (1991)

I believe that if you are literate, all literature that you expose yourself to is your heritage to claim
or reject. (from 1996 interview)

All Bharati Mukherjee quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bharati Mukherjee (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.