...the routine of life goes on, whatever happens, we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.

But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.

Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.

Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.

I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.

Women want love to be a novel, men a short story.

A dreamer, I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.

Life was a series of greetings and farewells, one was always saying good-bye to something, to someone.

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.

The point is, life has to be endured, and lived. But how to live it is the problem.

The greatest love stories are not written by the ink of the pen, but by the ink of the heart.

The spectacle has changed but our eyes remain the same.

Somehow, we each create our own prisons, one for which only we, hold the key.

I've been interested in dreams myself for a long time, and it's a big part of the Indian tradition, especially where I was brought up in Calcutta in my family, which is quite traditional.

The Age of Oil has really exhausted its usefulness, and it has actually become a danger to our lives and our ability to survive on the planet.

I have a long list of things that make me mad.

I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have by reading novels.

It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.

I think that if writers don't speak about real life, it's because they don't know it.

I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be.