I don't feel any great need to subscribe to a certain notion of Buddhism that says "You have to do this" or "You have to do that." Buddhism does not …

- Pankaj Mishra

I've never really felt that being part of a literary community is all that important. It can be extremely detrimental to a writer. It can damage succ…

- Pankaj Mishra

Writers in the nineteenth century - people like George Eliot and Flaubert - were accustomed to addressing particular communities with which they shar…

- Pankaj Mishra

The whole idea of mindfulness is all about having a second-level monitoring of your thoughts and being able to recognize them as being negative or ha…

- Pankaj Mishra

Freedom of speech doesn't guarantee great literature.

- Pankaj Mishra

When I first decided to be a writer, that meant dealing with preoccupations and concerns that took little account of Indian traditions. I saw India's…

- Pankaj Mishra

There are some serious limitations in Mo Yan's situation as a writer in China today - just as there are for Jia Zhangke, one of the world's greatest …

- Pankaj Mishra

There is a lot of anxiety in India about writers selling out to foreign audiences, but I’m neither flattering the Indian audience nor the American au…

- Pankaj Mishra

Most suffering is human-made and avoidable. It's mostly in your head.

- Pankaj Mishra