If you grow up in a place, and you're small, even if the place is itself also small, it's huge to you. It's what's out there: it's the world outside of your door.
It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitant and afraid to pursue a creative life.
Literature is such a profound and deep way to look into someone else's life, his mind, his hopes and thoughts. Books have opened so many doors for me, taking me to places where my normal life and its finite limits could never have.
She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.
She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at a time.
She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.
She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.
Sometimes, so much of the difficulty is the question of 'What am I going to write about?' because the world is so vast.
The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold.
When I am experiencing a complex story or novel, the broader planes, and also details, tend to fall away.
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.
Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honour and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I think that I'll think of it very much as the final sort of final moment for this book and put it behind me along with the rest of the book, as I write more books.
Blood and tears are going to be our lot, whether we like them or not. Our blood and tears will flow; maybe the parched soil of India needs them so that the fine flower of freedom may grow again.
Connect with
Login with Facebook