Just 'thoughts'

* I would not want to belong to any club which would accept me as a member – Groucho Marx

* If you never change your mind, why have one? – Edward de Bono

* How did a non-practising, chain-smoking Muslim lawyer, who liked a drink, barely knew the basics of Islam, could speak no language other than English, preferred to dress in an immaculate suit, almost settled down in England, snubbed mullahs for dreaming of an Islamic state, abhorred Gandhi for his hymn-chanting politics, and dreamt of becoming an Indian Ataturk, single-handedly create Pakistan – M.J.Akbar on Jinnah in his book ‘The Shade of Swords’

* What is a man but a congress of nations ? – Ralph Waldo Emerson

* To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul – Simone Weil

* ” ………When I came to the US as a 17 year old from Karachi, all my friends were Jewish. It wasn’t a conscious thing, but something in the way they interacted with their parents, and the values they had, their relation to their grandparents, I could relate to.”

“I know what you’re saying” said the Jewish man, motioning to his Indian partner. “As soon as I met her parents, I felt at home. The way they spoke, the way they acted with her, the smell of their house, the feel of it: I was in my aunt’s house. I felt instantly at home, comfortable; I fell asleep!”

- From ‘The Global Soul’ by Pico Iyer

* “Best thing about Brooklyn? All the countries of the world are here. Worst thing about Brooklyn? None of us get along.” – An elderly black man in Wayne Wang’s and Paul Auster’s mock documentary, Blue in the Face

* Speaking across a language gap means speaking less to win than to communicate – Pico Iyer

* I dislike feeling at home when I’m abroad – George Bernard Shaw