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.

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?

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.

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.

If you've brains it's better than beauty - brains last, beauty doesn't.

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.

Care for him who shall have borne the battle

A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.

O sweet solace of labors. [Lat., O laborum Dulce lenimen.]

Religion gives a dignity to distress.

At the end of the day, I let myself have a glass of wine.

The church's final word is not 'church' but the glory of the Father and the Son in the Spirit of liberty

We are regularly in danger of having too light a view of our sin and also too light a grasp of what Jesus has done to free us from our sin.

These flowers are like the pleasures of the world.