“I hated this love that I had for my familylove that demanded my time and energy, that sought to control my life down to every thought and action.I now realize that it was not love but an unhealthy ...”

“Conchpore is real. It is as real as Malgudi, Brahmpur, Lilliput or Macondo. And also as real as San Francisco, Madurai, Edinburgh, Gaborone or Tokyo. You know that fictional towns exist. You visit ...”

“How can we know the dancer from the dance? Did Yeats create his poems, or did his poetry make him a poet? How does one separate the creator from hiscreation? They create each other. On a mutual pla...”

“Real gases behaved like ideal gases as long as they remained in stable conditions. When the environment changed, either with increased temperature or mounting pressure, they began to deviate from t...”

“Depression weakens a person at every level and bullies can smell weakness like dogs smell fear.”

“A great Tamil poet, given to decadence and debauchery, once said that the story of his life could serve as an example to the youth on how one shouldnot live. Having lived, or rather, having sleepwa...”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“I do not snivel that snivel the world over,That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth,That life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crape and tears.”

“I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness-...”

“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could ...”

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”