I will say I am the sum of my books.

The writer is all alone.

We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal

My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world is an extraordinary shoddy, dirty, dingy world.

The biography of a writer - or even the autobiography - will always have this incompleteness.

Life is a helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can't do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.

Africa has no future.