How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I see them begin to weaken, and press on. 'I told you the truth,' I say yet again, 'Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.' (2.15.12)
Think about it this way: wasn't the PlayStation 1 awesome? But if you played it today the graphics would look pretty lame. So which is true—is it awesome or lame? Since it was awesome at the time, doesn't it make sense for your memory to be the truth?
Quote #8
Thus proving to me that I have been only the humblest of jugglers-with-facts; and that, in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case; and maybe this was the difference between my Indian childhood and Pakistani adolescence-that in the first I was beset by an infinity of alternative realities, while in the second I was adrift, disorientated, amid an equally infinite number of falsenesses, unrealities and lies. (2.22.59)
We wanted to break this down for you since it explains a lot about how Saleem views India and Pakistan. So there isn't truth in either India or Pakistan, but for different reasons. In India there are so many truths that there isn't one truth. But in Pakistan there are so many untruths, that there is no room for truth.
Quote #9
The war in the Rann lasted until July 1st. That much is fact; but everything else lies concealed beneath the doubly hazy air of unreality and make-believe which affected all goings-on in those days, and especially all events in the phantasmagoric Rann... so that the story I am going to tell, which is substantially that told by my cousin Zafar, is as likely to be true as anything; as anything, that is to say, except what we were officially told. (2.23.29)
Now things are getting pretty trippy. Before Saleem was telling us fictional things as if they were facts, but now the facts are so horrible that they seem like they must be fictional. Not to mention that both sides lied about what happened, so even the facts are fictional.