I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I'm not. I'm just obsessed with my work.

I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline.

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of people you don't know, and you want to know what's going to happen to them.

I want my books to sell, to be read. I'm not interested in being obscure.

So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.

In a painting, you can't make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist's stroke.