Free speech is not just free speech for people you admire. It's also for people who you think of as reprehensible.

Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected.

Things, even people have a way of leaking into each other like flavours when you cook.

The thing about literature is that, yes, there are kind of tides of fashion, you know; people come in and out of fashion; writers who are very celebrated fall into, you know, people you know stop reading them, and then it comes back again.

A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.

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.