"What these people don’t realise is that what they are doing is very harmful. In fact, films like Kerala Story and Gadar 2, I haven’t seen them but I know what they are about, it’s disturbing that films like Kashmir Files are so massively popular…"

"To an extent, The Kashmir Files, a recent film by Vivek Agnihotri, has tried to reset the Kashmiri Hindu narrative, and that is why so many are rattled by it. Many prominent Kashmiri voices, politicians, intellectuals, writers and poets—all those who stayed silent even as the Kashmiri Hindu genocide unfolded right before their eyes—called for a ban on the film. To them I ask—can there be reconciliation without remembrance? Crime without comeuppance? Can there be death without deliverance? Can there be justice without Nuremberg? Why do they want to hide the truth about the Nadimarg massacre that the film truthfully depicts, where terrorist Zia Mustafa lined up 23 unsuspecting Kashmiri Hindus and shot them point blank, and as he was escaping, he heard a baby cry and his comrade goaded ‘ye karnawun chupe’ and then the baby became the 24th victim. Why do they want to hide this? Why do they want to hide the truth about Girija Tickoo, who was raped and cleaved in two by a mechanical saw while she was still alive? Why do they want to hide the truth about B.K. Ganjoo, who hid inside a rice barrel when jihadis came looking for him after his Muslim neighbour informed on him? Ganjoo was shot dead. Rice laced with his blood was fed to his wife. Why do they want to hide the truth about slogans raised from mosques on 19 January 1990—“Ralive, Tsalive, Galive [convert, run or die]; ‘Death to kafirs’; Pandits go but leave your women behind’; Nizam-e-Mustafa!’ Why do they want to hide all this? And what is this other side of the genocide that they demand should also be shown? Yasin Malik, the assassin of Squadron leader Khanna, loved dum aloo? Bitta Karate, the killer of Kashmiri Hindus, was the son of a shawl weaver? Zia Mustafa, the perpetrator of the Nadimarg massacre, was a compounder at a hospital? I will tell you why they want this truth to be hidden. Because they realise that The Kashmir Files is not just a film, it is a Proustian collection of memories. Of Girija. Of Ganjoo. Of Dinanath. Of tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus who were betrayed by their own friends. But they forget. They might have taken away from the Kashmiri Hindus their home, but they can never take away from them their words. For their entrapment in a film may fool us into believing they have a physical form, a form that can be destroyed when the film is destroyed. But the words existed much before their prisons did. Words never die. They always survive. In times of terror, we wrap them and hide them like our ancestors did, and it may take 30 or 300 or 3,000 years for them to be uttered again—but uttered again they will be. And when they are, their words will echo in the valleys of violence where people only know how to light Molotov these words will make them light diyas again."

"This film is dedicated to all the persecuted minorities in the world."

"This is the exact description in Shamsu'd-Din Muhammad Araqi's biography Tohfatul Ahbab."

"You are studying in India's topmost university but you don't know who Araqi is?"

"His sole intention was to destroy to the temples and shrines of infidels. To put an end to their traditions and rituals."

"In this independent India, in this democratic India, in this secular India: they were once again ousted with swords and guns."

"Do you know what this means? Raliv means Convert! Chaliv means leave! Galiv means Die! Convert! Leave! or Die !"

"This was their seventh exodus. And this wasn't an ordinary exodus. This time it was a genocide. And the story doesn't end here. They faced yet another genocide. And neither Araqi nor the Terrorists nor the State were responsible for it. But you and I were responsible for it. .... When we decided to remove them from our hearts and minds. And this was the real genocide."

"If we haven't read about it, it's not part of our history. If we haven't seen it, it hasn't happened. So there was no real genocide in Kashmir. If anyone tries to tell the truth, you say, 'don't preach!'."

"Vijay Raaz – Aftab Ahmed"

"Vijay Varma – Moeen Arif"

"Amruta Subhash – Razia Ahmed"

"Everyone says, "it's just a slap". You know what that slap did? Suddenly i became aware of all the unfair things... i had learned to accept. What's expected of me is that i move on from the unfair."

"Sulakshana Sabharwal: Let it go child. Women must learn to be tolerant."

"I will not change my dream to match my reality. I will change my reality to match my dream."

"My time will come."

"Ram Kapoor – Advocate Pramod Gujral"

"Tanvi Azmi – Sulakshana Sabharwal, Vikram's mother"

"Ratna Pathak Shah – Sandhya Sandhu"

"Kumud Mishra – Sachin Sandhu"

"Geetika Vidya Ohlyan – Sunita"

"Maya Sarao – Advocate Netra Jaisingh"

"Dia Mirza – Shivani Fonseca"

"Pavail Gulati – Vikram Sabharwal"

"Taapsee Pannu – Amrita Sabharwal (nee Sandhu)"

"Subodh: Does she have a real case for divorce? When you're truly in love, a little physical aggression is an expression of love."

"Ikhlaque Khan – Nasir Firdausi"

"Sheeba Chaddha – Hamida Firdausi"

"Kalki Koechlin – Shweta a.k.a. Sky"

"Ranveer Singh – Murad Ahmed a.k.a. Gully Boy"

"If she choochie-choos with my boyfriend, of course I will whack her."

"Alia Bhatt – Safeena Firdausi"

"Siddhant Chaturvedi – Shrikant Bhosle a.k.a. MC Sher"

"I got you a gift. Alphabets. It's amazing how we imagine that just these few alphabets will someday arrange themselves in a way that everything will suddenly make perfect sense. A permutation of known words suddenly bringing forward a previously unknown meaning. It's so oppressive, this obsession with final answers."

"Aap davaai kyon nahi lete hai? ( Why don't you take the medicine? )"

"I have one which is equally terrible. Which email can attain cyber enlightenment? One that has no attachments!"

"Now that you have saved its life, will you also give it a proper upbringing and a good education? What if it was the worm's karma to just lie there and get crushed? Or worse, the worm was trying to commit suicide and you've put it in the pot, and now it has to crawl it's way back to nirvana."

"Every action or inaction leaves behind a karmic record."

"You know it should have more to do with intoxication than with drinking. (As a retort to Charvaka's comment - "I always knew monks are closet drinkers but unfortunately liver cirrhosis is going to give you away.")"

"Rituals are symbolic theatre. Once you have accepted the symbol or the truth behind the symbol, there is no need to stress on it all the time."

"All ethics must be arrived at in isolation of religious beliefs."

"Just cut down on the sentimentality a bit. We must address people's reason more."

"We are all blind men trying to see the elephant."

"I guess we agree with reason, but now it’s a matter of disposition."

"There was an island and you were to be reborn as a tormentor or a slave. The tormentor would make life hell for you, will give infinite pain to you and your kin, just for his pleasure. And he had no remorse over his actions to crush his victim. Add to that there was no karma, no soul, no retribution, no being responsible for your actions. And you had to choose any one of them. Who would you be?"

"You know how you doubt sometimes if what you remember is your own experience, some dream or something somebody told you that you pictured so well that it became your own memory."

"I have to draw opinion and assurance about my own art away from what everyone else says."

"When I first started taking pictures, I was very much amused by the character of the perfumer in Suskind's novel. Just the idea of a man trying to capture every scent, starting from the people to the surroundings to experiences. You know, it was very much amusing."

"A frog once asked a centipede how is it able to walk on a hundred feet, so gracefully synchronized while the frog finds it difficult to manage even two. The centipede took a moment to analyze its own walk and was baffled. So as it tried to walk further its feet got entangled and it tripped."