India was ... a country filled for the most part with people who live so close to the necessities of existence that only important things are important to them.

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately - many people will help you unintentionally.

India was ... a country filled for the most part with people who live so close to the necessities of existence that only important things are important to them.

to the Indian, politics are what the weather is to an Englishman. Politics are an introduction to a stranger on a train, they are the standard filler for embarrassing silences in conversation, they are the inevitable small talk at any social gathering.

it is in the oral traditions of the villages that the arts of India are really alive. The brief Western immortality of museums is pointless to people who have seen eternity in their earth.