“This is what matters to me: the story of the scholarship boy who returns home one summer from college to discover bewildering silence, facing his parents. This is my story.”

“A good story is a good story no matter who wrote it.”

“Tales of great heroism were being told… at my parents home in Wirt County, West Virginia, it was understaged by media all repeating the story of the "little girl Rambo" from rural West Virginia who went down fighting.
It was not true.”

“Only from our stories can we discover that our stories have come to an end”

“What voice revisits me this night? What face
To my heart’s room returns?
From the perpetual silence where the grace
Of human sainthood burns
Hastes he once more to harmonise and heal?
I know not. Only I feel
His influence undiminished
And his life’s work, in me and many, unfinished.”

“It occurred to me that I was standing face to face with the hero of a love story nearly as dramatic as my own.”

“But the boy who left the hall was not the boy who had gone in some ten minutes before. After my college days, my political work, and after my years of stay at Uttarkashi at the feet of my master, Tapovanam I knew that what I gained on the Ganges banks was that which had been given to me years before by the saint of Tiruvannamalai on that hot summer day – by a mere look”

“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”

“He explained to me that he wanted a simple boy-meets-girl story with lyrics. This I felt was quite beyond my capabilities. I did not know any boys who met girls.”

“The inspiration really comes first from the character and the story. That vision of what the story is, and what the character is, the world that they inhabit and what the story wants to tell. That’s really what inspires me.”