The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

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?

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.

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.

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.

To some of us, the nights are too long. To some, the days.

Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Life is stronger than death. Victory is ours through Him who loved us.

We are all teachers, or should be. Anyone who relays experience to another person is a teacher. Not to transmit your experience is to betray it.

A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic.

What are the purposes and priorities of teaching? . . . First, to inspire. Second, to challenge. Third, and only third, to impart information.

All that the socialists understand about money is the fact that they want it from others.

If you owe too much on American Express, and your Diner's Club notes are too hard, take a loan on your Visa, and pay it off with your MasterCard!

An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

One cannot understand the rhythms and meanings of the outer world until one has mastered the dialects of the body.

People should go about their daily lives, to work, to live, to travel, to shop, to do the things people did in the same way as they did them before 11 September.