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.

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.

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.

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.

. . .once you find out he's cheated on you, you have to keep finding out, over and over and over again, until you've degraded yourself so completely that there's nothing left to do but walk out.

In architecture the idea degenerated. Design allows a more direct and pleasurable route.

I think that the mythology of Van Gogh's life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.

The nuns taught me that the best thing you can do in life when things get difficult is to work.

Never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.

Now is the only time there is... Make your now wow, your minutes miracles, and your days pay!

Don't have a cow, man.

How strange a thing is the heart of man!

A show is exhausting when it stinks. It's exhausting when you have to work overtime to make something work.

Whatever can be understood or perceived can never be the eternal Truth. The Unknown is the Truth.