My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it's just continuous overload.

In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.

I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It's about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

My first novel, 'The Tiger's Daughter,' embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man's land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.

A farmer is dependent on too many things outside his control; it makes for modesty.