Friends meddle with my plan of work. I resent people dropping in for a chat.

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

Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis.

I was never a cardholder. But I was leftist in the sense that I voted communist.

Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourself with any person or point of view.

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.

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.