"Cursed be he above all others Who's enslaved by love of money. Money takes the place of brothers, Money takes the place of parents, Money brings us war and slaughter."

"It grieves me when I see what fate Does on the best of mankind wait. Poets or lovers let them be, 'Tis neither love nor poesy Can arm against death's smallest dart The poet's head, or lover's heart. For when their life in its decline Touches th' inevitable line, All the world's mortal to 'em then, And wine is aconite to men. Nay, in death's hand the grape-stone proves Fatal as thunder is in Jove's."

"Persuasion's flowing well."

"Nec si quid olim lusit Anacreon, delevit aetas."

"Amrita's life was more colourful than the bright colours she used in her paintings—this is a good look at it."

"that she was really a virgin because she'd never experienced the spiritual equivalent of copulation: she had many lovers but they'd left no scar. I'll leave a scar."

"A life cut tragically short, but with more colour perhaps than one may find in her work."

"An Indian with a measure of European blood, she returned to India to shed her acquired skin....She saw her country with new vision and has left a legacy of pictures simple and grand...as a tribute to the Indian countryside and its people."

"At stake was not only a serious and viable artistic career as a woman, but the development of a subjectivity that was being defined through the self-portrait. conscious of being both muse and maker, Sher-Gil took on the position of artist and object with a double consciousness of being both.”"

"Art in India was never the same after her comet like appearance. There are only a few moments in the history of art which pinpoint a new departure, a new direction. Such a moment in the history of modern Indian art was the appearance in the mid-thirties of Amrita Sher-Gil with whose paintings contemporary paintnig in India took shape and demonstrated the possibility of a contemporary style and expression that were, at the same time, of the soil and in direct continuation of the great national past."

"Rose water and raw spirit...weird amalgam of the bearded star gazer and the red haired pianist pounding away at her keyboard."

"She [Sher-Gil] melded the Western and Indian idioms and did not, like many other artists of her time, attempt to find an authentic ‘Indian’ mode or weave together a nationalist agenda."

"I was positively stunned and have straight away become a votary of Mathura art to the exclusion of all the other and later schools."

"It is dreadful to think of Paris in German hands but what preoccupies me still more is what is going to happen to modern French art and the younger artists."

"I was positively stunned and have straightaway become a votary of Mathura art to the exclusion of all the other and later schools. I had some of the things in reproductions but never dreamt they were so magnificent. With the possible exception of Mahabalipuram I don’t think I have seen anything in Indian sculpture that I liked so much."

"The self-portraits display the artist moving from girl to woman to artist as she explored a sensuality that ranges from the heavy-handed to the subtle. Sher-Gil casts herself in a serious light in her Self-Portrait with Easel (1930), moving deliberately from the domestic and the intimate context of the nineteenth-century woman artist to the monumental and majestic poses recalling those of Rembrandt and later Van Gogh. Indira dressed as a European gentleman with Amrita dressed as her female partner."

"I didn't know how much truth there was to gossip of her being a nymphomaniac, but I was eager to get to know her."

"Traditions that were once vital, sincere and splendid and which are now merely empty formulae, [nor to imitate fifth rate western art slavishly] break away from both and produce something vital, connected with the soil, something essentially Indian."

"She was very fair and there was an expression of weariness in the lovely liquid dark eyes. Her little finely curved and red hued lips seemed like drooping rosebuds and were sealed as if it were in silence eternal....she seemed as if she guessed the cruel fate which had been meted out for her by the Rani and Rajah and her other rich but distant relations in whose hands she seemed a helpless toy."

"...was to interpret the life of Indians and particularly the poor Indians, pictorially."

"I am always in love, but unfortunately for the party concerned, I fall out of love or rather fall in love with someone else before any damage can be done."

"Towards the end of 1933 I began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India, feeling in some strange inexplicable way that there lay my destiny as a painter."

"Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse and many others, India belongs only to me."

"Modern art has led me to the comprehension and appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture. It seems paradoxical but I know for certain that had we not come away to Europe, I should perhaps never have realised that a fresco from Ajanta or a small piece of sculpture in the Musee Guimet is worth more than a whole Renaissance.'"

"The life of Indians, particularly the poor, pictorially....with a new technique, my own technique...and this technique though not technically Indian, in the traditional sense of the word, will yet be fundamentally Indian in spirit."

"In "Toward a Development of a Cosmopolitan Aesthetic""

"Amrita Sher-Gill: Art and Life: A Reader (page xvii)"

"My art is not a career, it is myself and I know myself best!"

"I cannot control my appetiate for color, and I wonder if I ever will."

"I shall in future be obliged to resign myself to exhibiting them (her paintings) merely at the Grand Salon, Paris, of which I happen to be an Associate and the Salon de Tuileries known all over the world as the representative exhibition of Modern Art, and to which I have been invited to participate in the past, a distinction I may add that few can boast of."

"Revelations. Ellora magnificent. Ajanta curiously subtle and fascinating-I have for the first time since my return to India learnt something from somebody else's work."

"The Brahmacharis as the most difficult thing she had ever done....don't you think I have learnt something from Indian painting?...I don't know whether it is a passing phase or a durable change in my outlook but I see in a more detached manner, more ironically than I have ever done."

"These little compositions are the expression of my happiness and that is why perhaps I am particularly fond of them."

"No one mirrors his age clearer than the artist, for here is the living moment made concrete, the particular made general."

"We're all awash in a sea of blood, and the least we can do is wave to each other."

"Every living person has certain feelings about the world around him. It is these feelings, common to all men, which are the raw materials of the artist's inspiration. This he must 'translate', into the structure of an art form, whether music, poetry or painting. The problem of the painter is this 'translation'; that is, he has to create some arrangement of shape, line and colour which convey the idea or the emotion which moved him to paint this particular picture."

"The Senator is a drug dealer."

"Barack Obama has been a grave disappointment to many of us, particularly with the increase in the number of drone strikes. His Administration is now strangling any country that would dare to stand up to the might of imperial America. Ireland should be an example of a small country that stands up against this international bullying. It has already got Bradley Manning, a person I salute, from inside the army. We need more of these people to tell the truth. Meanwhile Mr. Obama is off on this vulgar deathbed tourism. The one time I agreed with Mrs. Winnie Mandela was when she condemned Jacob Zuma for having his photograph taken with the poor unfortunate Nelson Mandela who was a complete zombie in the photograph and did not have a clue who it was who was molesting him by touching his hand and this horrid stuff. Let us, please, have a little [interrupted] I am asking him to appeal to the Government to offer sanctuary to Mr. Snowden. Even though this is a small country in economic difficulty, we should affirm to the world that we stand for openness, accountability, truth, honesty, decency and integrity, all of which Mr. Snowden represents."

"Two charming young women approached me and lobbied me about this matter because they both have Down's syndrome children with a reasonably high IQ."

"On a point of order, I thought I was in Seanad Éireann, but it appears I have inadvertently wandered into a meeting of Donegal County Council."

"If I were a woman I would not be reassured by being told the legislators are apparently not concerned with the health of a woman. They should be."

"The reason for the lack of business in this House is perfectly clear and it is not the responsibility of this House to deal with the matter. The Taoiseach and the cabal that runs Fine Gael have decided that they will take over the role previously held by Fianna Fáil as the slightly constitutional party. They have decided to destroy the Seanad by refusing to refer legislation to it."

"The Minister of State should stop saying "with respect". He and his Government have no respect at all for this House."

"It does not say much for a person's morality if he is prepared to sacrifice what he believes in for a job."

"I believe that at some stage some citizen across Europe will drop a match on the floor and the whole bloody thing will go up, and it cannot come soon enough as far as I am concerned."

"Will he listen to the voice of the people, this wonderful democrat, this absolute democrat who would not recognise democracy if it came up and puked in his face?"

"Look up - to where the corn is green!"

"[On the comment about Islam.] I could have done a big public exposure [...] But what I did was email her and said: "Julie, firstly this is deeply, deeply offensive. Both Jews and Muslims don’t eat pig. I don’t know what you’re doing but this is really unacceptable and offensive. I was incredibly polite.""

"The problem is she doesn’t have any in-depth knowledge. I can imagine her endlessly watching the film Exodus with Paul Newman. She’s got a kind of Hollywood view of Jews. You know, ‘Jews are so clever, we’ve survived ..."