Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.

My parents are deeply pious Hindus.

When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?

I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.

It's easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don't want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.

Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer, I realized that he was writing about good people doing good things. This did not match my experience of life and so I found my sentences stretching and becoming less plain.