"...why am I constantly writing about the past? Well, I probably couldn't approach the present directly, because I was…"

"Although she had fled the blood-spattered scene and fled the collected crowd of identical individuals — one-legged, n…"

"She makes the apparently exotic . . . seem as universal, as vital and familiar, as the food on our plates."

"Her first day in Bombay wilted her. If she stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel room, she drooped, her head hung,…"

""Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are op…"

"That was the way life was: it lay so quiet, so still that you put your fingers out to touch it, to stroke it. Then it…"

"She was the tree that grew in the centre of their lives and in whose shade they lived. (III, p110)"

"...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges …"

"I do not recognise India of the present time where, under the banner of 'Hindutva,' intimidation and bigotry seek to …"

"It is a great influence on one's thoughts to be always on the outside, not belonging."