Whenever I have had to write fiction, I've always had to invent a character who roughly has my background.

In England I am not English, in India I am not Indian. I am chained to the 1,000 square miles that is Trinidad; but I will evade that fate yet.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

There are two ways of talking. One is the easy way, where you talk lightly, and the other one is the considered way. The considered way is what I have put my name to.

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.

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.

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.