“It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.”

If anybody reads an Indian newspaper, all these things are obvious, and so I am not breaking news. All I am doing is representing my community as it actually is.

When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?

People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.

Money is part of how we move through the world, what stores and restaurants we go into, whether we take a train to the airport or a taxi. Describing characters living in the real world requires describing them engaging with money.

I can’t have composite characters. I can’t attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.

It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.

For me, a lot of the humor comes not from innocence but from characters trying to figure out how to get what they need. I don’t try to be funny, but am relieved when an opportunity comes up for humor.

The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies.

As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions.

I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships.

For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

To me exposition always contains tenderness.

I need to tell the things that are important but which don’t make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.

There are also so many emotional aspects to money – feelings of inadequacy, feelings of security. I am not sure if there needs to be more about money in fiction, but the absence of this aspect can make a story feel somehow frictionless and unreal.

Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

Even within my stories, people hold opposing views.

You don’t score 64 goals in 86 games at the highest level without being able to score goals.

I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more.

No one is a freak of nature. No one is going to be able to take the pounding a running back has to take over a 10- or 12-year career and not lose a step.

To be able to thank Allah for a blessing is a blessing within itself.

As my father used to tell me, the only true sign of success in life is being able to do for a living that which makes you happy.

I’d like to be able to be more topical and timely and more of-the-moment and I think the way to do that is, instead of waiting until I have twelve songs to release all at once, just to release them as I come up with them.

I’d never be able to see the shore.

Actors are always outsiders. It’s necessary to be able to interpret – and that gets distorted when you become famous.