“If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.”

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”

“I don't write fantasy; I write historical novels about an imaginary place.”

“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”

“If I could, I'd write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence”

“I think of Ramu. The Ramu I know and the Ramu I'm writing about have become indistinguishable. The same's true of the Bombay I'm recounting from experience and the Bombay I'm assembling through words. This is often how novels begin for me. There's a convergence. I live. Then something prompts me to write. The writing is not about life. It is a form of living. The two happen simultaneously.”

“His whole life was now summed up in two words: absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog.”

“Good in Crisis; Sucks at Normal.’ That about sums up my whole life, doesn’t it?”

“Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.”

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”