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'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.

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

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.

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.

God uses language to create and command us.

Disorder makes me feel at ease if I'm alone, embarrassed if I'm not.

The Lord watches over us every moment of every day. He is there--and He cares--about every step and every breath.

I dream of a vegan world - that's where I want everything to go.

If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.

I did not see any way that I could possibly give birth to someone else and also give birth to myself. Far from feeling guilty, it was the first time that I had taken responsibility for my own life.

Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.

So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it.

A lot of praying helped me a lot.

Say nothing and just make music and you'll find plenty to say.