When you have counted eighty years and more, Time and Fate will batter at your door; But if you should survive to be a hundred, Your life will be death to the very core.

The last to learn of gossip are the parties concerned

When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.

Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion.

I turned to the Partition experiences, which were churning in my mind. Then came my first novel Train to Pakistan.

I still think that the point of reference for every Indian when he is in doubt on any political or social issue is to say, "What would [Mahatma] Gandhi have done under the circumstances?" I didn't subscribe to his fads - prohibition, celibacy, no doctors - but generally he was always right. He meant more to me than any of my gurus.

I was under police security for 15 years because I was on their hit-list. I opposed Khalistan because I thought it would be suicide for the Sikh community to demand a separate state, and they heard me because they knew I was one of them. I think I turned round at least the intelligent Sikh's point of view and that gave me enormous satisfaction.