I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

PTSD in its rawest form is a death sentence which causes many veterans and others to execute themselves in hope to be free.

Prayer is a royal power.

If I were a maker of perfumes, I would make one and call it 'Spring,' and it would smell like this cool, sweet, early-morning air.

There are people who dislike you because you do not dislike yourself.

The most dangerous tendency of the modern world is the way in which bogus theories are given the force of dogma.

My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.

I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all.

Most other competitions are individual achievements, but the Olympic Games is something that belongs to everybody.

After 13 years of hard landings in gymnastics, one ski run had delivered the biggest injury of my career.

Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six