Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

It's easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don't want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.

For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?

Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?

Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.

It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.

I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.

It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.

Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.

My parents are deeply pious Hindus.

Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.

You asked about love. I don't know about love, Daphne. I just know I don't want anything but you. I don't want to anywhere but with you.

There is no such thing as an “independent artist”. All artists are essentially co-dependent of the audience.

I'll paddle board, swim in the ocean, roll in the sand, soak up the sun, eat good food, be with friends and family and go fishing with my dad.

Who dat dere's gunna beat dat team? Who Dat? Who dat?

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace; it is the act of giving that is hard and painful. How little does a smile cost?

You can't make chicken salad out of chicken feathers

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

How can you get fired from the company you started?