Midnight's children

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

… And Musa, my father's old servant, who had accompanied the couple to Bombay, went off to tell the other servants, in the kitchens of the red-tiled palaces, in the servants' quarters at the backs of Versailles and Escorial and Sans Souci: 'It's going to be a real ten-rupee baby; yes, sir! A whopper of a ten-chip pomfret, wait and see!' The servants were pleased; because a birth is a fine thing and a good big baby is best of all…

Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come

we are also the victims of our titles.

The world is full of love stories, and all lovers are in a sense the avatars of their predecessors.

Children, however magical, are not immune to their parents

But (as history so often demonstrates) the moment of one's greatest triumph also contains the seeds of one's final downfall

Never believe in a djinn's promises, my son! Let them out of the bottle and they'll eat you up

Some people are never satisfied