Before I came to England, my favorite authors were P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. I used to devour both.

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.

What grows best in the heat: fantasy; unreason; lust.

I don't think people cry reading 'Midnight's Children,' but a lot of people seem to cry watching the movie.

This is going to make me sound ancient, but I remember Juhu Beach when there weren't any buildings on it. You'd go through countryside and arrive at this amazing beach. I remember driving from Delhi to the Qutab Minar through countryside. Mehrauli was a little village - that's all gone.

War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected.

When people use the term magic realism, usually they only mean 'magic' and they don't hear 'realism', whereas the way in which magic realism actually works is for the magic to be rooted in the real. It's both things. It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real.