“One of the things a writer is for is to say the unsayable, speak the unspeakable and ask difficult questions.”

“You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.”

“If I were asked for a one-sentence sound bite on religion, I would say I was against it.”

“Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way. The reason for ensuring that that privileged arena is preserved is not that writers want the absolute freedom to say and do whatever they please. It is that we, all of us, readers and writers and citizens and generals and goodmen, need that little, unimportant-looking room. We do not need to call it sacred, but we do need to remember that it is necessary”

“...no doubt much will be said elsewhere by the armies of bigotry and punditry. Let them volley and thunder. I'll speak of bookish things.”

“Realism can break a writer's heart.”

“At last,' Padma says with satisfaction, 'you've learned how to tell things really fast.”