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.

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.

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

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.

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.

Don't ever let another man call your child daddy.

What is love when it's not for dopamine?

Loyalty is standing on someone’s side even if their actions are against your will.

It was never important for a wedding to be about anything other than me and my partner. A big celebration was never my cup of tea.

Social media... it's the future for the new generation.

The principle of investing is that by use you possess and gain, by disuse you decline and lose.

It's hard to move on when you can see too many good possibilities or any kind of possibility really. That's something that always kind of slows me down and can be a bad place to be in.

The final war will be between Pavlov's dog and Schoedinger's Cat.

What can be explained by the assumption of fewer things is vainly explained by the assumption of more things.

What's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks And formless ruin of oblivion.