I was a perfect housewife. Being a mother has always been the job I liked best. Absolutely.

The doctors shrugged their shoulders and grumbled that perhaps if I were to put on weight that would protect me a little - being so thin, I would never succeed in remaining pregnant.

I learned very soon to get along by myself.

Even under the British there were hostile groups. There were clashes. But, as we found out later, these were clashes provoked by those who had no wish to let us live together - on the eve of the Partition. The policy of keeping us divided was always followed by foreigners, even after the Partition. If Indians and Pakistanis had been together...I don't say as confederated countries but as neighboring and friendly countries...like Italy and France, for example ...believe me, both of us would have progressed much further.

What good does it do to remain tied to an ideology if you don't achieve anything by it? I have an ideology myself - you can't work in a vacuum; you have to have faith in something.

One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.

We couldn't keep ten million refugees on our soil; we couldn't tolerate such an unstable situation for who knows how long. That influx of refugees wouldn't have stopped - on the contrary. It would have gone on and on and on, until there would have been an explosion. We were no longer able to control the arrival of those people, in our own interest we had to stop it! That's what I said to Mr.[Richard] Nixon, to all the other leaders I visited in an attempt to avert the war.