Abraham Zogoiby covered his face that night in August 1939 because he had been assailed by fear, [...] a sudden apprehension that the ugliness of life might defeat its beauty; that love did not make lovers invulnerable. Nevertheless, he thought, even if the world's beauty and love were on the edge of destruction, theirs would still be the only side to be on; defeated love would still be love, hate's victory would not make it other than it was.

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.

We must conclude that it is not only a particular political ideology that has failed, but the idea that men and women could ever define themselves in terms that exclude their spiritual needs.

Madame Bovary and a flying carpet, they are both untrue in the same way. Somebody made them up.

Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old--it is the new combinations that make them new.

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

What I worry about and don't like is the way in which the ideology of multiculturalism has declined into cultural relativism. I think that's very dangerous. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, for God's sake, says that you can't have one law for everybody... that's stupid.