In a sense, being a full-time writer is less fun because there's no office to go to anymore, there's no set routine, there's no schedule. It can be quite isolating.

You can't expect a man in a dung heap to smell sweet.

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

When I was writing 'The White Tiger' I lived in a building pretty much exactly like the one I described in this novel, and the people in the book are the people I lived with back then. So I didn't have to do much research to find them.

Any good society survives on a circulation of favours.

Strange thoughts brew in your heart when you spend too much time with old books