“The intention (of the puja pandals) is not so much to entertain as to disorient and astonish; to tap into the Bengali’s appetite for the bizarre, the uncanny.”

“It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.”

“The criminal law stands to the passion of revenge in much the same relation as marriage to the sexual appetite.”

“If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.”

“It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.”

“I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist.”

“… this refined language of Indian modernity – an Indian language that was actually first used as a first language by a home-grown cosmopolitan elite – enough to say, with or without humour, ‘Ami tomake bhalobashi’ (‘I love you’) or ‘Apni kothai thhaken?’ (‘Where do you live?). These stray statements performed an incantatory ‘open sesame’ – into the bounded, charmed, small-scale world of ‘Bengaliness’. The ‘honorary’ Bengali might be myopic; might be an aficionado of art-house cinema; might be politically left wing; might have taste for lyric poetry; a tendency towards the autobiographical; an appetite for fish; or display none of these traits.”

“Blind Lemon Jefferson is a-comin',
Tap tap tappin', with his cane.”

“Sheep were docile, yes, but vigilant. Unlike many people, sheep were always aware that predators existed and were alert for the scent and the schemes of wolves.
Contemporary Americans were so proseperous, so happily distracted by such a richness of vivid entertainments, they were reluctant to have their fun diminished by acknowledging that anything existed with fangs and fierce appetites. If now and then they recognized a wolf, they threw a bone to it and convinced themselves it was a dog.”

“No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.”