So Thomas Pynchon wants a private life and no photographs and nobody to know his home address. I can dig it, I can relate to that (but, like, he should try it when it's compulsory instead of a free-choice option).

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

You can adhere to your faith, but that faith needs to march in line with the rest of the world and needs to find a way of expressing itself in the modern world.

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It's like that. If you're going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.

Writers have been in terrible situations and have yet managed to produce extraordinary work.