When you have counted eighty years and more, Time and Fate will batter at your door; But if you should survive to be a hundred, Your life will be dea….

I turned to the Partition experiences, which were churning in my mind. Then came my first novel Train to Pakistan..

I still think that the point of reference for every Indian when he is in doubt on any political or social issue is to say, "What would [Mahatma] Gand….

[Sex] is of real interest to every human being and so why gloss over it, and it's fun, it's interesting, it has so many dimensions..

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..

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….

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..

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

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..

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….

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

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

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

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

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

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….

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

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….

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….