To call someone like me a writer-activist suggests that it's not the job of a writer to write about the society in which they live. But it used to be our job.

The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people's wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed.

For many people, the family is portrayed as the settled place of reasonable safety, but as anyone who has read 'The God of Small Things' would know, for me it was a dangerous place. I felt humiliated in that space. I wanted to get away as soon as I could.

My mother is like a character who escaped from the set of a Fellini film. She's a whole performing universe of her own. Activists would run a mile from her because they could not deal with what she is.

Jesus died when he was 33, and when I was 33, I was coming out of a failed marriage and was in a really low point in my life because I was really sad about that. God healed me so much during that period. So I loved that year because I leaned on God, and then, as a result, I started checking things off my bucket list.

God has a most wicked sense of humor.

I went to several public schools. I went to religious school. I was thrown out of Hebrew school, which was the final straw. They said, 'God doesn't like you anymore. Go eat pork.'

I have to have faith that we're going to succeed in transforming where we get our energy from. The big worry is whether or not we're going to do it before it's too late. And I think nobody knows the answer to that.