I'm interested in reality but I'm not interested in realism at all.

Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead.

Boring people don't know they're boring. That's the problem with boring people.

I'm trying always to leave out what I think is extraneous. And to find what I think is the most wonderful language to make a beautiful sentence.

I think it's true that unless human beings experience something, they simply don't understand what people are going through.

I'm the author of my own misery.

I don't think anybody says to Coetzee or Dostoyevsky or Kafka, "Your characters aren't likeable." It's not about your character winning a popularity contest. That's not the writer's job.

It's not the writer who determines how good she is anyway. Writers don't determine that. It's readers who determine that.

Do the obvious, you won't forget it. Do the obvious, you won't regret it. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

Nonfiction gives you subjects. Writing fiction I can have more fun, but I have to invent my subject.

Without curiosity a writer is dead.

...for a man is a Herdentier - an animal that always follows the herd, a gregarious animal - and quickly follow's its neighbour example.

Distinguish between getting lost and losing your way. The first is a shift in direction. The second is the absence of perspective. Cultivate perspective and you will be able to steer home.

Without space, there could not have been God. Likewise, without chit the other three elements, manas, buddhi and ahankar cannot manifest.

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself

You have to surrender less when you see a film than when you go and see something live.

Let good people sin. Give virtue to rotters.

I tend to think in dramatic terms. In life, there may be an actual drama, but it would be the fictionalized, imagined drama that engaged me.

It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? If you find out, please tell me.

The reason I can't follow the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy is that it ends up leaving everyone blind.

We need a greening of globalisation.