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

I don't think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I'm enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

I think goodness is about how person behaves to person, and also person to world, to nature.

You get your inspiration - suggestions - wherever you have to, even from your mother.

Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.

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.