What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

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.

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.

Life is fragile, handle with prayer.

You're only young once but you can always be immature.

Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.

I'd take about 40 thousand CDs, and then take about three full vans of people to hit every hood, every mall, and every club. Just hit one city to the next.

My breath in the cold air was bleach that accidentally spilled on a black t-shirt.

My primary goal of hacking was the intellectual curiosity, the seduction of adventure.

Here's the weird thing about the Murdoch family; They believe what they read in the papers.

If I have something and move forward, it is only my weakness, which I hate and turn into my strength. You are not lost as long as you do not give up!

Barack Obama is not the kind of guy we want in the Oval Office leading America. We do not want somebody who doesn't like his own country, for whatever perverted, convoluted, stupid reasons.

I feel qualified and competent to try anything that's thrown my way because I don't have to be a success. I can just try.