“A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.”

“When we stop believing in the gods we can start believing in their stories.”

“Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.”

“When you’ve fallen from the sky, been abandoned by your friend, suffered police brutality, metamorphosed into a goat, lost your work as well as your wife, learned the power of hatred and regained human shape, what is there left to do but, as you would no doubt phrase it, demand your rights?”

“Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)”

“Sardar Harbans Singh passed away peacefully in a wicker rocking-chair in a Srinigar garden of spring flowers and honeybees with his favourite tartan rug across his knees and his beloved son, Yuvraj the exporter of handicrafts, by his side, and when he stopped breathing the bees stopped buzzing and the air silenced its whispers and Yuvraj understood that the story of the world he had known all his life was coming to an end, and that what followed would follow as it had to, but it would unquestionably be less graceful, less courteous and less civilized than what had gone.”

“All liberty required was that the space for discourse itself be protected. Liberty lay in the argument itself, not the resolution of that argument, in the ability to quarrel, even with the most cherished beliefs of others; a free society was not placid but turbulent. The bazaar of conflicting was the place where freedom rang.”