I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

Tokyo may have more money and Kyoto more culture; Nara may have more history and Kobe more style. But Osaka has the biggest heart.

The slums are not a place of despair. Its inhabitants are all working towards a better life.

...a rainy day ceases to have meaning for a person who has lived in the open under a monsoon cloud most of his life.

That dreams have power only over your own mind. But with money you can have power over the minds of others

Sometimes street knowledge can be as important as book knowledge.

Never judge a man's actions until you know his motives

I am not into the unrealistic realm of magic realism where birds talk.

I did not go to any creative writing workshop; I did not major in literature. If I can write, anyone can write. All it needs is imagination.

I am very interested in human-interest stories emerging from modern India. I get my inspiration and daily dose by reading the Hindustan Times.

A great artist is not one who merely fits into a genre but one who defines the genre.

It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.

Humans have a propensity to oppose things when it is not their idea and they had no input, or simply because it was initiated by those whom they dislike.

the moon is just another kind of clock

I loved to read when I was a kid, and as soon as I realized that an actual person got to make up the books I loved so much, I decided that that was the job for me.

You are not going to be the girl I’m going to marry are you? You are going to be the girl that got away.

I've made a few albums in such an autonomous way; it often has been exhausting. It's almost difficult to enjoy the process when you take on so much.

I'd be very controversial if I said why, and I don't do controversial anymore. That's too passé. So last year. Being controversial is boring now.

The prompter the refusal, the less the disappointment.

Even in ordinary reproduction [photography] verges on facsimile.

You cannot enslave a mind that knows itself. That values itself. That understands itself.