Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.

Reverence is fatal to literature.

It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.

I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.