I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust them.

I tell Allah I love Him immensely, immensely. But I tell Him I cannot be better, because of how the world is.

Everyone in Annawadi talks like this: 'Oh, I will make my child a doctor, a lawyer, and he will make us rich'. It's vanity, nothing more. Your little boat goes west and you congratulate yourself, 'what a navigator I am!' And then the wind blows you east.

A great deal of what is presumed to be intractable or inevitable in this world doesn't strike me that way at all.

When I'm engaged in a story my health is not a big deal, but when I'm not doing anything, if you sit me down, I can get tied up in my own medical dramas. So I much prefer to work.

I'm useless when I meet writers I love - I go slack-jawed and stupid with awe.

But if writing about people who are not yourself is illegitimate, then the only legitimate work is autobiography; and as a reader and a citizen, I don’t want to live in that world.