Everything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.

I find it very difficult to relate to India's new middle class. This very patriotic and neoliberal group that mixes religion and economics together. I find them very irksome. Very difficult to like. They are privileged, but they don't want to talk about their privilege. It's difficult to find poetry amongst these people. Some sort of hidden spirit of beauty.

What fiction does is bring you closer to the essence of truth, as opposed to simply giving you the truth. And there's no knowing truth. Truth seekers are all charlatans. You can only feel the truth of something.

People are infinitely more interesting than characters that I come up with. Because the characters I come up with are basically combinations of people I've met. Combinations. You select certain details, that's all.

The only way one can display learning is by playing with it. Because the truth is that there's something embarrassing about displaying heavy knowledge. You feel sort of annoying.

People are interested in relevant stories. In big events. But I'm not interested in big things; I'm interested in the smaller details of life.

I want to make sense of things, to understand the world, but my work is never really instructional. I have no wisdom to impart or give, so I think my dream readers would be people who just use the book as an excuse to get into their own cycle of thoughts. The book is just like a map. It's just a jotting-down of things that you can interpret in your own ways.