“Man without life companion is either god or beast.”

It is exciting to write about the present once one gets beyond the trivia of the moment. As a time to live in, as a time to think about, the present is intriguing.

Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.

I simply seem to drift. But I sort of allow the drift, because it has a kind of check – it forces me to work harder at what I’m interested in.

Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?

So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.

I tend to follow a scattershot approach to reading a lot of very diverse subjects interest me, and I’m quite happy to read stuff on any of them.

I don’t think people give Indian society enough credit. We may not like to talk much about things but we do, basically, want to live and let live.

Put your backbone where your wishbone is.

You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.

It’s not the gods But our own hearts We need to fear. The evil starts Against all odds Not there but here.

All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right, An emptiness above– Know that you aren’t alone. The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all your years.

I rarely listen to music while writing. If I don’t like it, it bothers me, and if I like it, it absorbs me so much I can’t write.

Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don’t have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.

I certainly think its very important that writers as citizens – not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens – should talk about things that matter to them.

Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.

What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works.

Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing.

Between God and the soul there is no between.

All the things in this world are gifts of God, created for us, to be the means by which we can come to know him better, love him more surely, and serve him more faithfully.

For those who love, nothing is too difficult, especially when it is done for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Abyss calls to abyss. It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where the abyss of our nothingness encounters the Abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God.

Those who pray from the heart do not think about the prayer they are saying, but about the God to whom they pray.