[Indira Gandhi] looked tired that day, and all of a sudden I exclaimed, 'Deep down I don't envy you, and I shouldn't like to be in your place.' And she said, 'The problem is not in the problems I have, it's in the idiots around me. Democracy, you know...' I now wonder what she meant by that unfinished phrase.

Is it right to shoot the poor prostitute or a woman who is unfaithful to her husband, or a man who loves another man?

Besides the things I asked [Indira Gandhi], she told me about her son Rajiv, who is married to an Italian girl and is a pilot for Air India, then of her younger son Sanjay, who is an automobile designer and still a bachelor.

I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe, Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-Semitism.

But to deny fate is arrogance, to declare that we are the sole shapers of our existence is madness;if you deny fate life becomes the series of missed opportunities, a regret for what never was and could have been, a remorse of what was not done and could have been done, and the present is wasted, twisted into another missed oppurtunity.

But here's what I've learned in this war, in this country, in this city: to love the miracle of having been born.

America's a hard school, I know, but hard schools make excellent graduates.