“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 life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it’s just continuous overload.

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.

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.

Growing is a lifetime job, and we grow most when we’re down in the valleys, where the fertilizer is.

When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.

The key to growing a business is that you need to be meeting some segment of the consumer’s needs. If you’ve got a small business and a product or service that is not popular, you simply have to change your product or service to be more popular.

Everybody knows it hurts to grow up…and we’re still fighting it.

I didn’t have any pets growing up.

With growing experience, all skillful commanders sought to profit by the power of the defensive, even when on the offensive.

Transformationally motivated people are the growing edge of a great continuity of souls reaching back to the very earliest times.

It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.