Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.... The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you

Once you get that instinct for the fictiveness, the fictionality of fiction, it kind of sets you free.

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.

My friend Lou Reed came to the end of his song. So very sad.But hey, Lou, you'll always take a walk on the wild side. Always a perfect day.