Quote by Eunice de Souza: “I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.”

Declaring something impossible is often a way of refusing to imagine it. Experience teaches that what seems out of reach frequently becomes possible when enough people refuse to accept the limit. This is a lesson earned, not just stated — the caution comes from having seen the impossible happen.

De Souza was writing during a period when Indian feminist literature in English was gaining new visibility, and women writers from minority communities — Goan Catholics, Parsis, Muslims — were asserting distinct literary voices within the broader Indian English tradition.

Indian poet born in Pune in 1940, known for her sharp, spare English-language poetry and her long career as head of the English department at St Xavier's College, Mumbai. Her poetry dealt with Goan Catholic identity, female experience, and the social codes of Indian middle-class life with irony and precision.