Nilekani's technocratic obsession with gathering data is consistent with that of Bill Gates, as though lack of information is what is causing world hunger.

That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.

Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.

...a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.

She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture.

Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.

NGOs are dangerous. They do what the missionaries used to do in Colonial times. They are Trojan Horses. The worse the situation, the more the NGOs.

We are only fully human when we act as if the life beyond us matters.

When I was preparing for this speech I asked my family for advice. One member replied "There's a first time for everything so try to be funny and brief."

I absolutely relate to being alone in squalor, trying to come up with something adequate. I relate to that, and I've been known to crawl out of bed and drink out of a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke.

It's sometimes tiring to get off a long-haul flight and go straight to the studio for a shoot, but if you really plan everything well, you can get so much out of combining travel with work.

The Western poet and writer of romance has exactly the same kind of difficulty in comprehending Eastern subjects as you have in comprehending Western subjects.

This is still a man's profession, with a lot of men who intellectually and emotionally have not accepted that the military could be women's work.

The man who has a house everywhere has a home nowhere

Landscape painting tends to fall under more academic controls. I must say I often like working within these controls. It gives me the feeling that I'm taking part in a noble tradition.

As you grow, it feels hopelessly corporate but it really is worth putting in place these compensation bands.

When I was very young, you would get the TV listings from The Globe and The Herald, and you would basically go through them, circle things, and map out your viewing week.