“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.”

While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.

Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer,

The little babies are missing their families from their past lives.

Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider’s look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.

We all become afraid. We all look at others and think these other people are more fortunate than us.

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.

I define “grindin'” as just nonstop work! Nonstop work, nonstop progress. Can’t sleep during that grind – I mean, you get a little bit of it, but if you’re progressin’ at every hour, every second, you are grindin’.

To a woman–I mean, a nice woman–there is no such thing as men. There is a man; and either she is so fond of him that she can talk of nothing else, however unfavourably, or so much in love with him that she never mentions his name.

Keep focused on the substantive issues. To make a decision means having to go through one door and closing all others.

Moving away from “useful” doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health.

The more I am aware of my mortality the better person I am and the better I am at choosing a life that is aware of its beauty.

The need of the hour is that your life should be revolutionised.

I tell people to have a relationship with their work every day, even if it means you just move a comma.

Language can also be play and music and beauty and desire and grief and rage and truth without always having to be message-driven or purely functional.