“If you were left alone, you'd hate it. Loneliness gets old in a hurry”

“I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in the loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. (217)”

“People living alone get used to loneliness.”

“Loneliness, the uninvited dilemma. You are born alone and you will die alone.”

“Try not to be in a hurry to get older because youth happens once in your life. Thereafter, old age stays with you forever.”

“You always felt destined for stardom of one kind or another. But the fear that maybe that wasn't true wouldn't leave you alone. That you were no more than the classes you'd taken, the schools you'd attended, the books you'd read, the languages you spoke, your scholarships, your master's thesis on Borges and the English writers, and so on, but nobody unique, with a talent only your own. You were desperate for something that was yours alone. I was yours alone, but that isn't what you meant.”