I put my hand out and wiped the vomit from his lips, and cooed soothing words to him. It squeezed my heart to see him suffer like this - but where my genuine concern for him ended and where my self-interest began, I could not tell: no servant can ever tell what the motives of his heart are. "Do we loathe our masters behind a facade of love - or do we love them behind a facade of loathing? "We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.

Like most of my friends in school, I was a member of multiple circulating libraries; and all of us, to begin with, borrowed and read the same things.

See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.

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

I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.

I’ve lived in several countries and been a disaster everywhere.