Until I was about eighteen, yes [I didn't want to get married]. But not because I felt like a suffragette, but because I wanted to devote all my energies to the struggle to free India. Marriage, I thought, would have distracted me from the duties I'd imposed on myself.

It was the very fact that no one ever imposed anything on me or tried to impose himself on the others.

One day in 1965 Rajiv wrote me from London, where he was studying, and informed me, 'You're always asking me about girls, whether I have a special girl, and so forth. Well, I've met a special girl.' And when Rajiv returned to India, I asked him, 'Do you still think about her in the same way?' And he said yes. But she couldn't get married until she was twenty-one, and until she was sure she'd like to live in India. Sonia is almost completely an Indian by now, even though she doesn't always wear saris.

When you govern a country, and especially a country so vast and complex as India, you never arrive at anything.

Mankind will endure when the world appreciates the logic of diversity.

The old need the company of the young so that they renew their contact with life.

My sons...I was crazy about my sons and I think I've done a super job in bringing them up.