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

That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing - which is never an easy thing to do.

All the things that were read to me by my father were stories about things becoming all right.

If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.

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.

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.

The world is always in movement.