“Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of a man.”

“If man's capacity for the fantastic took up as much of his imagination as his capacity for cruelty, the worlds, seen and unseen, might be very different.”

“I think we're going back to the way things use to be, before a bunch of European intellectuals in tights decided to draw a line between what's rational and what's not. I don't think our ancestors thought the distinction was necessary.”

“I have had much experience with the unclean and uncivilized in the recent past. Shall I tell you what I discovered? I am not the state of my feet. I am not the dirt on my hands or the hygiene of my private parts. If I were these things, I would not have been at liberty to pray at any time since my arrest. But I did pray, because I am not these things. In the end, I am not even myself. I am a string of bones speaking the word God.”

“These are not the banu adam you're looking for.”

“Wonder and awe have gone out of your religions. You are prepared to accept the irrational, but not the transcendent.”

“All translations are made up" opined Vikram, "Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something”