I admit I have no forgiveness. If anyone is ever rude to me, however much they may try to make up, I can't bring myself to re-establish the old [connection]. And when they drop me, I have a sense of relief.

I think the sense of belonging does give you a certain amount of mental satisfaction.

If you look at things as they are, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one's conduct. Wrong triumphs over right as much as right over wrong. Sometimes its triumphs are greater. What happens ultimately, you do not know. In such circumstances what can you do but cultivate an utter indifference to all values? Nothing matters. Nothing whatever.

But big people’s illnesses are always made to sound big. The simple shutting and opening of the royal arse-hole was made to sound as if the world was coming to an end.

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

I don't want to be cremated, I want to be buried. I don't believe in wasting wood and I feel that one should give back to the earth.

I am not a serious person. I don't claim any profundity for any of my writing.