People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It's like that. If you're going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.

The time-honored role of the artist [is] to speak truth to power.

When you're writing for the screen, you have to be hyper-conscious every moment of how the audience is going to react. If you write just one scene where the audience is confused or it breaks their concentration in some way, then you've lost them, and you might never get them back.

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.

Rohinton Mistry's celebrated novel 'Such a Long Journey' was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.

British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.