Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.

Dullness is a kind of luxury.

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

I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.

I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.

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.

I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night before I left Calcutta: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.