Martine Syms Quotes

I've never written nearly as much about place as people seem to think I do. I just write about class.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.

'Be faithful to your roots' is the liberal version of 'Stay in your ghetto.'

Class still matters in Britain today.

I didn't necessarily grow up in a trailer park, but there is a brief part of that in my life. So I can make fun of it a little bit. I'm not too much of an outsider, where I'm just making fun of someone.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Class is real. It can't be faked.

When I was writing 'The White Tiger' I lived in a building pretty much exactly like the one I described in this novel, and the people in the book are the people I lived with back then. So I didn't have to do much research to find them.

I don't think there's a whole lot of class literature at all. I think most of that has become racially based, and people don't think of it as being class literature.

If I wrote a memoir, it would be like 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.'

I only knew about daily life. It was said, well, it isn't everybody's daily life. That is why I started.

The poor generally follow behavior patterns established by the rich.

We cannot isolate a human being from the circumstances of his condition

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.

Most Americans seem to be stuck in the economic strata to which they were born.

In the developed world, income inequality within the country is the most important determinant of health standards and life expectancy.

… perceptions of poverty have gone up because there’s been rising inequality.

I don't believe that killing the French model in order to become the U.K. or the United States overnight is the solution. You have a big debate on inequality there, and for our society, a lot of inequality would not be bearable.

You're not going to have something set on a council estate that explores all elements of human existence, the variety of experience inherent in any community.

I was an Indian with zero sense of caste till I was 20. That's an unusual privilege but it came out of the fact that I was a middle-class Bengali.

I think class is still an issue in this country.

Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings.

The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich.

Any society which gives lip-service to the idea of equal opportunity is going to generate jealousy of others who are better off than you are, even if the thing that's in short supply can't be carved up and shared without destroying it.