“In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.”

I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.

I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

Man without life companion is either god or beast.

I don’t think anyone should be banned. If you don’t like a book, set it aside.

Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.

I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.

Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.

I just love music – by no stretch of the imagination am I professionally competent.

And an equation is the same whether it’s written in red or green ink.

Of course, the greater one’s need, the greater one’s propensity to be mesmerized.

And the process of reading is such a private one. I once came into a room where a friend of mine was reading one of my books, and he clicked his tongue impatiently and shooed me off.

There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.

I often feel newspapers are just filling up space. Of course, I also know people who write really long books.

My painting carries with it the message of pain.

When I say be creative I don’t mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem.

I want to be an artist artist, a real artist. I don’t just want to do this for temporary money.

A true artist always looks to the new generations.

I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They’re always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you’re doing something right.

An artist pours their soul on their work that only a few can recognise.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

Being a artist comes with more then just music and videos it comes with a business .