Freedom is for the educated people who fought for it. We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis..

I haven't any close friends. Friendship needs time to interact, sit down, gossip. I don't have that time..

Morality is a matter of money. Poor people cannot afford to have morals. So they have religion..

I admit I have no forgiveness. If anyone is ever rude to me, however much they may try to make up, I can't bring myself to re-establish the old [conn….

Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourse….

If you look at things as they are, there does not seem to be a code either of man or of God on which one can pattern one's conduct. Wrong triumphs ov….

I don't want to be cremated, I want to be buried. I don't believe in wasting wood and I feel that one should give back to the earth..

When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars..

I am prolific. Any rubbish I write gets published, so books keep churning out..

I have never, in 50 years, ever missed a deadline [as a journalist]..

Not forever does the bulbul sing In balmy shades of bowers, Not forever lasts the spring Nor ever blossom the flowers. Not forever reigneth joy, Sets….

But big people’s illnesses are always made to sound big. The simple shutting and opening of the royal arse-hole was made to sound as if the world was….

I am not a serious person. I don't claim any profundity for any of my writing..

That's Delhi. When life gets too much for you all you need to do is to spend an hour at Nigambodh Ghat,watch the dead being put to flames and hear th….

I was never a cardholder. But I was leftist in the sense that I voted communist..

Nature provides that a man who slaves all day should spend the hours of the night in a palace full of houris whereas a king who wields the sceptre by….

I was under police security for 15 years because I was on their hit-list. I opposed Khalistan because I thought it would be suicide for the Sikh comm….

I acquired long-lived parents. My mother died at 94. Father died at 90, holding a glass of whisky. I think that's the secret of longevity - to have l….

No one has invented a condom for the pen yet. My pen is still sexy..

I am alone, but never lonely. You have always books around you..

I discovered that a diplomat's life is largely entertaining and meeting people. At the end of the day there's nothing. So I gave up..