We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love.

O the shame of it, the humiliating shame of being condescended to by dolts

I'll tell you what divorce hasn't taught me. It didn't teach me not to get married again.

I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?

I will come back to India - so deal with it.

What one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.