I had no student friends to talk to about literature. My tutor was a really nice man, very charming - but he had no literary judgment.

And it was strange, I thought, that sorrow lasts and can make a man look forward to death, but the mood of victory fills a moment and then is over

I always knew who I was and where I had come from. I was not looking for a home in other people's lands.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh.

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.