His ignorance seemed to widen with everything he read.

I will say I am the sum of my books.

The melancholy thing about the world is that it is full of stupid people; and the world is run for the benefit of the stupid and common.

Out of its squalor and human decay, its eruptions of butchery, India produced so many people of grace and beauty, ruled by elaborate courtesy. Producing too much life, it denied the value of life; yet it permitted a unique human development to so many. Nowhere were people so heightened, rounded and individualistic; nowhere did they offer themselves so fully and with such assurance. To know Indians was to take a delight in people as people; every encounter was an adventure. I did not want India to sink [out of my memory]; the mere thought was painful.

I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.

I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.

After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities.