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

You can't deny what you've learned; you can't deny your travels; you can't deny the nature of your life.

Writers should provoke disagreement.

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

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

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there.

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