A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

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.

After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price.

English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots; and those whom it once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves. The Empire is striking back.

FROM THE BEGINNING MEN USED GOD TO JUSTIFY THE UNJUSTIFIABLE.

I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. . . . On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.

It means everything—it means freedom.

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.

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.