Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path.

It's always been colossally important to me that my books should be well received in India. It's where I come from.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

Realism can break a writer's heart.

When I am writing novels I don't read a lot of novels so I try to catch up in-between.

I do have a lot of time for people in my life, and friendship is a very important subject for me. I think I'm unusual among the writers I know in that respect.

It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.