“Unlike his compatriots - many of whom were still, in their mid-twenties, adolescent posturers, doomed to futility - he had an engaging earnestness about him. Unlike them, he realized his incomplete...”

“The hope that fuels the pursuit of endless economic growth that billions of consumers in India & China will one day enjoy the lifestyles of Europeans and Americans is as absurd & dangerous a fant...”

“As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than th...”

“In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan had put forward a proposal to guarantee racial equality at the League of Nations, but Woodrow Wilson overturned it in the face of majority support.”

“National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceiv...”

“In 1980, shortly before my 11th birthday, I wrote my first essay in English.”

“Political tags such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want peopl...”

“To Live In The Midst Of Communist Society Is To Unashamedly Proclaim A Life Of Holiness”

“Revolution? Really, Ono! The communists want a revolution. We want nothing of the sort. Quite the opposite, in fact. We wish for a restoration.”

“You have the right to promote your own happiness just like everyone else, just like me. Your present dream has been shattered, but you can dream another. You should know that 'you can't relive old ...”

“And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters ...”

“What happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?”

“Magazine and television advertisements have me subconsciously believing that a sexy airbrushed image can sell a lot more canned tomatoes than without this image. Whos to say that a dolled up vagina...”

“images precede the real, making and shaping it into what we come to name and know as the real, producing it, fabricating it, into the worlds we come to inhabit.”

“...I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.”