“The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns.”

I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.

In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.

Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.

In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.

Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.

My first novel, ‘The Tiger’s Daughter,’ embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man’s land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn’t regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn’t conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

But, Christ, there’s a difference between exotic and foreign, isn’t there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?

She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

The traveler feels at home everywhere, because she is never at home anywhere.

You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted… I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.

In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.

Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.

The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important ’cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.

Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of thier enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them.

Minnesota has a proud tradition of having two Senators on the Ag committee – a tradition I’d like very much to continue.

There are two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering you run away from, which follows you everywhere. And there is the suffering you face directly, and so become free.

In the industry, you do need some ethics – if one film does well, then thousands get work and money comes back to the industry.

A highly learned man has two sources of happiness: either he abandons all earthly interests, or else he possesses much which could be abandoned.

A boat can’t have two captains.

The issue has two dimensions. One is the legal dimension and the other one is the issue at the realpolitik. [In the] legal realm.