To be a Sufi is to detach from fixed ideas and from preconceptions

The knowledge of God is a sacred pursuit.

When 'Midnight's Children' came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.

It is all right for the lion and the lamb to lie down together if they are both asleep, but if one of them begins to get active, it is dangerous.

Otherwise, I spend a lot of time at my boyfriend's home in the country, in New Jersey.

Growing up, I loved Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart. They are a big reason I'm a storyteller because they are two of the best.

I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 - they called it Peace Sunday.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.

All nations have present, or past, or future reasons for thinking themselves incomparable.

I resist thinking of myself as a teacher. I think of myself as a writer who has pulled a fast one and hoodwinked this institution into giving me a job and health insurance.

If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind.