A Quote by Bharati Mukherjee

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'
My father's diner, the Jefferson Coffee Shop, was a simple, 27-seat affair in Washington D.C., open for breakfast and lunch - coffee and eggs in the morning, cold cuts and burgers in the afternoon.
When I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for fiction writing, I felt both coveted and hated. My white classmates never failed to remind me that I was more fortunate than they were at this particular juncture in American literature.
The coffee shop played a big role in Vienna of 1900. Rents were sky high, housing was difficult to come by, your apartment probably wasn't heated, and so you went to the coffee shop. You went to the coffee shop because it was warm, because it was great Viennese coffee, and you went for the conversation and the company.
I went to graduate school in Iowa City, at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where the most passionate thing I did was attend University of Iowa basketball games.
I have an office in my house, with a comfy red print reading chair and a soft cream-colored desk. After I walk Winston the Wonder dog and have my breakfast, I head to my office. Every single day. Sometimes, when I'm working on revisions, I print off my manuscript and go to a coffee shop to work. But mostly you can find me in my office.
Lunch is a problem because my office is above our chip shop - everything is fried in proper beef dripping. It smells so good that by 12 o'clock it's hard not to think very lovingly of fish and chips.
The way that 'Vampire' was born was over a lunch. We got asked to do the show. A week later, we were hired. A week later, we were writing it. The minute we handed it in, it was ordered. The minute we shot it, it was picked up. Then we started working. There was never any, like, 'OK, here's what this show is...' We had to figure it out as we went.
I'm an ecumenical reader, grew up with all sorts of fiction, teach writing, went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, so my tastes and interests are broad.
If you're a new artist, practice your art and share it. Set up shop somewhere, whether it's a street corner or a coffee shop. I got my start in a coffee shop that didn't even have live music. I wanted to play in coffee shops that did have live music, but I didn't have an audience.
I remember having a discussion at some stage and saying a coffee machine would do well in the training ground. Everyone was like, 'No, in England, we drink tea.' I was like, 'OK, I was just saying that I think coffee works as well.' Next thing you know, after the international break, we had this massive coffee machine come in from Nespresso.
It's not sufficient in the internet age to communicate through the media; you have to be able to do it on the ground, door by door, coffee shop by coffee shop, shop floor by shop floor. You really have to do that as well.
In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything - write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown to change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas - and arrive home in time for lunch.
I was a rebellious student, called up in assembly almost every week for some misdemeanour, lots of time on the Headmistress's office for what must have been, in retrospect, annoying behaviour.
I wear my pajamas. That's the thing I love most about writing. I don't get changed until I actually have to go out of the house. I'll write and take a late lunch or go to a coffee shop when I get where I can't stand the four walls anymore.
I was watching the news that day when the bulletin came on that my father had been shot. I prayed. I asked God, 'Please don't let my daddy die.'
When I say that I went to grad school in Iowa City, people often assume that I went to the famed writers' workshop MFA program at the University of Iowa. I didn't. I got a master's in journalism.
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