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

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

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

If you were standing next to the prophet on the mountain, would you have seen the archangel? And my answer to that was probably not, even though it's supposed to be a really big archangel. He describes it as - the Archangel Gabriel as standing on the horizon and filling the sky. That's a big angel.

So India’s problem turns out to be the world’s problem. What happened in India has happened in God’s name. The problem’s name is God.

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

I think the book is less emotional than the film. With the film, the emotions are much more raw and in front. In the book, they are kind of ironized and seen through comedy.