“Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.”

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.

I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money.

I should have told her at the time. I could have taken a deep breath, looked away, and forced myself to say it.

I found myself in a maze where I’d taken the wrong turn. In my wish to do well for that congregation I wasn’t doing particularly well for myself or my friends or my family, and I even found that the work for God was taking me away from God.

The cynicism doesn’t come across in the final; it can be taken as a very sincere plea for someone to not go away.

There’s a huge difference in the attitude of the people of the United States of America toward women in politics. It has taken an enormous turn toward equality.

Facebook’s the real deal. Nobody can buy Facebook now. Everybody has taken an angle at it. But Facebook may be the place that organizes everybody’s personal information. It’s got a very good chance of being that.

I believe that there have been repeated attempts to influence prices in the silver markets.

Fame is what you have taken, / Character’s what you give; / When to this truth you waken, / Then you begin to live.

I would say except when I have been attacked the black community has seldom seen fit to even mention the gay aspect. And since when I have been attacked I have usually been defended by the black community,