Better to make prime ministers out of prisoners than prisoners out of prime ministers.

Better to make prime ministers out of prisoners than prisoners out of prime ministers.

All of the actors that have served to me as inspiration over the years have been those more associated with dramatic work who have, in turn, been able to embody their characters and lose themselves in those characters that they create.

I have no quarrel with people seeing me as a sinner.

Following 'Urumi,' I did get a lot of offers from Malayalam, but frankly, managing films in several industries can become a little hectic. So I decided not to take them up.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.

Down on the ground, we seem to do anything but make lengthy, robust monologues. We can communicate in an instant almost anywhere. Gone is the slow old letter - itself a monologue, a sort of considered performance of best self - and in its place is the e-mail, the text, the SMS, the tweet.

One who picks on you because he’s bigger than you is like most big bullies: if you can stay away and make him miss for a few rounds he’ll get frustrated. Once you strip away that feeling of invincibility, he can be had.

The world is ending, make no mistake. It's coming to an end. This can't go on for much longer. Capitalism has to fall.

Russia needs a strong state power and must have it. But I am not calling for totalitarianism.

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

All mankind is divided into three classes those that are immovable those that are movable and those that move.

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!

Faking your own death is illegal yet faking your own life is celebrated.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

If someone has to be the villain, I'll be the villain. I have no problem with it. The movies still say, 'Starring... the villain.'

I'd always wanted to write crime fiction. I loved Nancy Drew.

What I put in the stock market, I don't have to touch in my lifetime. I want to live off my bonds. I want to be that safe.

I liked the idea of being a writer more than I liked the idea of writing.

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size.

There's so many strict ideas and rules, whether it's from religion or it's just generations and generations.

You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else.