My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.

Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.

Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?

India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.

What a sense of possession, of confidence, it gave one to have pockets, to shove one's fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.

I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.

...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being.

I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.

When I was very young, I used to share much of what I wrote with my family, but as I got older and more self-conscious, it became a much more private process.

Fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun.

No, no - I think about thinking

Turn off the radio, TV, DVD, iPod, computer and cell phone. Then, listen.

Prayer means that we have come boldly into the throne room and we are standing in His presence.

I’ve decided to pick my moment to retire very carefully – in about 200 years’ time.

In This Body Mystery, even though it was written in the voice of people with HIV/AIDS, it's about how people come to accept their fate and their sickness. It's about accepting the way your life is.

Some men are more perfect than others.

Purpose in the human being is a much more complex phenomenon than what used to be called will power.

I know that my audience is largely women, so what I try to do a lot of times is address their issues.

Great music has layers of things to discover. I try to do so every night.