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.

You can't start with imbalance and end with peace, be that in your own body, in an ecosystem or between a government and its people. What we need to strive for is not perfection, but balance.

The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.

I was crushingly bored talking about politics 30 hours a week.

The fastest way for a politician to become an elder statesman is to lose an election.