Here's a strange fact: murder a man, and you feel responsible for his life - ''possessive'', even. You know more about him than his father and mother; they knew his fetus, but you know his corpse. Only you can complete the story of his life, only you know why his body has to be pushed into the fire before its time, and why his toes curl up and fight for another hour on earth.

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

Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.

Inconvenience in progress, work is regretted.

At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society.

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.

In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.