When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language.

If there is a choice between absolute safety and freedom, then freedom must always prevail.

Rock n' roll was a kid when I was a kid.

When you start writing about the stuff that is the central experience of your own life, you can talk about whatever you want, in whatever way you want.

If you want to draw people into the story, you really have to write as if you're writing a novel and make these actually-existing people, including the actually-existing person with my name, into a believable person on the page. And that requires distance. That requires not being right up against the events you're talking about.

I am on Facebook, but mainly as a way to spy on my children. I find out more about them from their Facebook pages than from what they tell me.

Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.