“Even as I took a long, hard look at some of the obvious downsides (Q: 'What are the three things keeping India down? A: Corruption, corruption and corruption.'), I still felt the upsides (Q: 'What is so fantastic about the India story? A: People, people and people.') tilted the scales in our favor.”

“Mediocrity comforts the masses. Mediocrity is a likeable attribute.”

“The trouble is Indians aren't used to being prosperous. We are more comfortable dealing with poverty- after all, poverty has been the staple here, and has been for many centuries.”

“God had the males of the world neatly divided: the can-dos and the no-can-dos. To that he'd added a third category: 'the gandus'. Very few men would make it to the can-do category.”

“Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo.”

“What I should like to find is a crime the effects of which would be perpetual, even when I myself do not act, so that there would not be a single moment of my life even when I were asleep, when I was not the cause of some chaos, a chaos of such proportions that it would provoke a general corruption or a distubance so formal that even after my death its effects would still be felt.”

“The only way to survive among the evil and corrupt people is to be even more wicked and more corrupt than they are!”