In my family, as in most middle-class Indian families I knew when I was growing up, science and mathematics were held in awe.

When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.

When I was writing 'The White Tiger' I lived in a building pretty much exactly like the one I described in this novel, and the people in the book are the people I lived with back then. So I didn't have to do much research to find them.

An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure; a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.

Educating children and their parents on the universal messages of free enterprise and self-determination takes money. So does grooming political talent within the community and training and hiring Latino surrogates to bring the message to Spanish- and English-speaking media.

Citizens United didn't work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps money sometimes.

I'm a believer in the Constitution and in the First Amendment. Not just for raising money but also for freedom of speech.

All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.