If you want to be a serious writer, then you have to write what there is to write about. If you're going to pull your punches and second-guess yourself and not do things because you're worried, then don't write. Stay home and do something else.

In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.

Home is the place where you feel happy.

Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.

I think that a lot of us, whether we are religious or not - there are no words to express some things except religious words. For instance, 'soul.'

To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.