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.

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?

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.

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

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.

The tragedy, however, is that you soon realize that the time you thought you had to fulfill the dreams had melted away before your very eyes.

Most firefights go by so fast that acts of bravery or cowardice are more or less spontaneous. Soldiers might live the rest of their lives regretting a decision that they don’t even remember making

Let’s just say, by the end of her second quarter Beli could walk down the hall without fear that anyone would crack on her. The downside of this of course was that she was completely alone.

Therm-bombs! Drop ’em right on us! I been roasted before—it’s nothing!

No one gets ahead in life by living a backward life.

I respect the government of Mexico. I respect the people of Mexico. I love the people of Mexico. I have many people from Mexico working for me. They're phenomenal people.

women who once aspired to the image of superwoman now worry about becoming superdrudge. Those who wanted to have it all now ask whether they have to do it all.

It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.

I feel overwhelmingly grateful to them, but I don't know what to do with their invisible gifts.

But I just really think there is a natural extension into other types of media because it's an excellent system for reliably locating and retrieving content.