It's very attractive to people to be a victim. Instead of having to think out the whole situation, about history and your group and what you are doing... if you begin from the point of view of being a victim, you've got it half-made. I mean intellectually.

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.

But everything of value about me is in my books.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

I think when you see so many Hindu temples of the 10th century or earlier disfigured, defaced, you realise that something terrible happened. I feel the civilisation of that closed world was mortally wounded by those invasions the old world is destroyed. That has to be understood. Ancient Hindu India was destroyed.

It is important not to trust people too much.

I will say I am the sum of my books.