“…and on MSNBC all over the world. Now, uhh, because it's available all over the world, doesn't mean, by the way, that anybody's watchin' it. Am I right Charles?”

On the variety of characters portrayed in his Narcopolis.
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us
Context: It had people from all over the country and the world. The great thing about Bombay as a city was it was a magnet for anybody with talent, or ambition or hunger, or beauty, or intelligence. If you had any of these things and you wanted to make something of yourself, you went to Bombay and the city would reward you. I think all of that changed in 1992, when the last big riots happened in Bombay between Hindus and Muslims. Now when I go back to the city and I look at it, I can see the kind of profound impact that those riots had, and how it's changed the character of the city, and in such a profound way that I don't think it will ever change back to what it was before '92.

As quoted and paraphrased in "I Have Been a Babe and a Boob" by Joe Winkworth, in Collier's (October 31, 1925), p. 15
Context: "I am through—through with the pests and the good-time guys. Between them and a few crooks I have thrown away more than a quarter of a million dollars. I have been a Babe—and a Boob. I'm through." [Ruth] confesses he faces either oblivion or the hard task of complete reformation. [He] realizes that he must make good all over again. "I am going to do it," he said. "I was going to be the exception, the popular hero who could do as he pleased. But all those people were right. Babe and Boob—that was me all over. Now, though, I know that if I am to wind up sitting pretty on the world I've got to face the facts and admit I have been the sappiest of saps. All right, I admit it. I haven't any desire to kid myself."

1910s, Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1912)
Context: I am all right — I am a little sore. Anybody has a right to be sore with a bullet in him. You would find that if I was in battle now I would be leading my men just the same. Just the same way I am going to make this speech.

Notes to The Atrocity Exhibition (1970; written 1967 - 1969, annotated 1990)
Context: All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or ancient Egypt, is reassimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonise past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality in attractive and instantly appealing forms.

I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)

Source: The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1
Context: Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded. Not so with those whose opinions and feelings are an emanation from their own nature and faculties.

From interview with Robert Block, 1995
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

NME, 15 April 2000
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20000529082432/http://www.nme.com/newsdesk/20000411113543.html

Source: On how Black women should challenge historical representations (as quoted in “Buchi Emecheta: Nigerian author who championed girls dies aged 72” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38757048 in BBC News in BBC News; 2017 Jan 26)