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.

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 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.

One day you’re a college graduate, in love with Mr. Right and looking for a job. The next day, your Rambo.”“Your timeline is off. And can we lose the Rambo part?

The joy of life is made up of obscure and seemingly mundane victories that give us our own small satisfactions.

I don't really do much social media. I just don't like it that much. I've trained myself to write very slowly for a lot of money so it really galls me to write quickly for free.

Womenfolk raised me and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home

I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think. I am not whenever I am the plaything of my thought; I think of what I am where I do not think to think.

There are a group of people who are managing the world to their advantage and who just look to the rest of us as people who will buy their products and fund their salaries.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, if you're going to San Francisco, you're gonna meet some gentle people there.

You promised, Seaweed brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!

Never underestimate your life. It is most precious. You never know what talents are hidden within you and what you have to offer to the world!

I know what I am fighting for. I am fighting for the most basic rights of innocent children. And that is why I never take the criticism too deep under my skin.