Today is R.K. Narayan appreciation day. Of his books & those deceptively simple sentences that carry so much force to make you mull over them. From the Painter of Signs to the Guide to even the extremely popular Malgudi Days, Narayan's world is enchanting to say the least.

“It is stimulating to live in a society that is not standardized or mechanized, and is free from monotony.”

“It seems to me that we generally do not have a correct measure of our own wisdom.”

“The sun set beyond the sea, so says the poet—and when a poet mentions a sea, we have to accept it. No harm in letting a poet describe his vision, no need to question his geography.”

“Every creature is born with a potential store of violence.”

“We stood at the window, gazing on a slender, red streak over the eastern rim of the earth. A cool breeze lapped our faces. The boundaries of our personalities suddenly dissolved. It was a moment of rare, immutable joy--a moment for which one feels grateful to Life and Death.”

“Swaminathan had never thought that this story contained a moral. But now he felt that it must have one since the question paper mentioned it.” (I love this one)

“Words have a knack of breeding more words, whereas laughter, a deafening, roaring laughter, has the knack of swallowing everything up."

“Friendship was another illusion like love, though it did not reach the same mad heights. People pretended that they were friends, when the fact was they were brought together by force of circumstances.”