“The cracks in old friendships are measured in awkward pauses.”

“The starkest rejection letter might be followed by a million-dollar advance. Don't let rejection start to look the same as failure.”

“All writers have their own pet commandments.”

“I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emo...”

“The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on gia...”

“After a life deprived of everything from romantic love to the choice of when to wake up in the morning, after 29 years without the ability to have a career or even to be alone at toilet, the Bijani...”

“When you're in the middle of a nightmare, something ordinary is the only hope. Anyway, ordinary things are the best. I've always thought so.”

“Dreaming is good but implementation is success”

“At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly.”

“We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma ...”

“If only it were possible to love without injury fidelity isnt enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body...”

“She looks at the swings, and I can see shes imagining what theyd look like if the kids werent there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away,...”

“I was like a ten-year-old kid who had been scraped off a mother's love so sudden and surreal that I kept hoping I could chant a few magical words and slowly, Mama Jas would materialise in front of me.”