The world is about the way in which our dreams intersect with our real life. Endlessly, the world of the imagination changes the world.

There are two things in Indian history - one is the incredible optimism and potential of the place, and the other is the betrayal of that potential - for example, corruption. Those two strands intertwine through the whole of Indian history, and maybe not just Indian history.

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable.

Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.

Mo Yan is the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Russian apparatchik writer Mikhail Sholokhov: a patsy of the regime.

faith without doubt is addiction