In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms.

That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.

Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.

...a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.

She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture.

Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.

NGOs are dangerous. They do what the missionaries used to do in Colonial times. They are Trojan Horses. The worse the situation, the more the NGOs.

As palaeontologist Andrew Knoll once said, "Animals might be evolution's icing, but bacteria are really the cake.

Building trust takes long- years, sometimes decades. It takes a second, a word, or a misstep to lose it. Regaining trust takes even longer.

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.

God loves all those who love him: I love them that love Me.

Leaps of innovation require a bravery that borders on absurdity.

We can talk about Manchester! I like coming here, it's a wicked city. It's my second favourite city in England after London. I like Liverpool too but there's a lot more to do in Manchester.

Satori is a brief flash. Suddenly the light breaks through. For a short timeless time we experience eternity in its unmanifest form. It's comparable to salvikalpa samadhi.

Who'd ever have thought that I'd be the face or the body of any kind of exercise at all.

I am not a princess, I don't want to be referred to as a princess - I find that super creepy.

These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the ship goes to heaven or hell.