Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.

In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?

The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

In other words, my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America.

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.

We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It's a question of time, not motive.

My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it's just continuous overload.

The wise shall learn.

After I am dead I would rather have men ask why Cato has no monument than why he had one.

I'm a really visual artist, and I love writing treatments for music videos, photo shoots, fashion, and all the visual parts that go along with making an album.

Why is it that Christian activists are regularly pilloried for basing social standards on biblical texts while liberals are actually praised for mixing religion and politics?

I admire your capacity for admiring.

We're wired to be empathetic and to care about the needs of others, but also to be curious about others. And I think that's just sort of in our DNA. And so portraiture is a very human act.

Somebody out there was trying to use my language and trying to speak for me. Rather than have that happen, I thought I'd do it myself. It's a fun thing. It's a way for fans to connect.

In actuality it's drum samples in the computer. I don't know, I've just never really dug into that whole technology thing, I feel like it hurts me as a musician a little.

To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.

I would have it inscribed on the curtains of your bed and the walls of your chamber: "If you do not rise early you can make progress in nothing."