My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world, and my parents are the most extraordinary father and mother.
Like many readers, I am continually in search of books that allow me to lose myself in an entirely unique universe.
I start writing at 7.30 A.M. and write till noon. I've never written a single word after 5.00 P.M.
What is divine? It is simply that which man has not been able to understand. Once you do, it loses its divinity.
What I would not like is to be ignored. I write from the heart. I don't write for me. I write for my readers.
A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.
If I use the word 'khichdi' in my novel, I don't have to get into the trouble of explaining that it is a dish of rice and lentils. My Indian readers know it.
We don't need to dumb down our stuff. And it's important to know how far we can push readers.
I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.
As you ripen, you’ll notice that time is the weirdest thing in the world, that these surprises are relentless, and that getting older is not a stroll but an ambush.
I am prepared to believe that a dry martini slightly impairs the palate, but think what it does for the soul.
As a parent, the only thing I am absolutely certain of is my own fallibility.
Sometimes friends make mistakes. Grievous ones that cry out for us to stay and prove we are true friends.
I'm going to die with my mind intact. And to me that is the most exciting way you could possibly die.
What's the point in being an unpopular writer? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. For me it doesn't, anyway.
Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.
If you've been hurt and you've grieved and you've been through the mill, it takes a long time to get over it.
Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures.
Archive material is a fabulous starting point - individual documents are like signposted roads, heading to a variety of intriguing possibilities.
History makes my mouth water - and that is as much because of the voids in what documentation remains as what is set in stone.
Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.
