“You can’t have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.”

For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder, a snake.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another’s, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.

No, I don’t think it’s fair to label Islam ‘violent.’ But I will say that to my knowledge, no writer has ever gone into hiding for criticizing the Amish.

The only people who see the whole picture,’ he murmured, ‘are the ones who step out of the frame.

One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.

It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.

I don’t dictate to anyone what to believe and what not to. And I don’t want that to be dictated to me either.

Even when things are at their worst, there’s a little voice in your head saying, ‘Good story!’

If you’re offended, it’s your problem.

If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and if possible, better.

Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.

We are the storytelling animal.

Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.

Until you know who you are you can’t write.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire.

As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it – otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.

The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1795 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged.

Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.

Ideas often kindle each other, like electrical sparks.

But this I know: if all mankind were to take their troubles to market with the idea of exchanging them, anyone seeing what his neighbor’s troubles were like would be glad to go home with his own.

The love of wine is a good man’s failing.

The greatest ideas, the most profound thoughts, and the most beautiful poetry are born from the womb of silence.

Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.