Do you know anyone who would - secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self - really prefer to return to childhood?

Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.

Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?

India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.

What a sense of possession, of confidence, it gave one to have pockets, to shove one's fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.

My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.

I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.

...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being.

I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

I venture to suggest that patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

The peace of great books be for you, Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages, Bleach of the light of years held in leather.

People will call you anything. It's up to you either to pick up the phone or not.

How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?

I still have the shirt I wore my first time on Johnny Carson's show. Only now I use it as a tablecloth at dinner parties. It was very blousy.

To know how to eat well, one must first know how to wait.

I think it's the same simple thing for everyone - to be happy, and have love in your life.

Your love is just the antidote when nothing else can cure me.

As chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for NASA appropriations, I say not a penny for this nutty fantasy.