Whatever binds us most, whatever is dearest to us, that is what we should offer the Lord. Doesn’t a mother give her child whatever she thinks is the best?

Consoling a miserable soul, wiping the tears of a crying person is greater than any worldly achievement.

Everything is God, there is nothing else but God.

When love and compassion fills your heart, you find newness in every moment, and life becomes a celebration.

Happiness depends on how you accept, understand and surrender to situations.

Children, we should simplify our life’s needs and use the resulting savings for charity.

Most human beings know only the language of exploitation. Due to their selfishness, they are unable to consider others.

Children should observe a regular schedule for sleeping and waking up.

Pray: O Lord, make my eyes see only the good in everyone.

We give physical exercise to the body, but neglect the heart. The exercise for the heart is uplifting the destitute and the suffering.

Our highest, most important duty in this world is to help our fellow beings.

In India, it's the rich who have problems with obesity. And the poor are darker-skinned because they work outside and often work without their tops on so you can see their ribs.

But isn't it likely that everyone in this world...has killed someone or other on their way to the top?...All I wanted was a chance to be a man--and for that, one murder is enough.

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.

It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

Having plenty of living space has to be the greatest luxury in a city, and I guess in some sense Bombay is the antithesis of what living in Canada must be.

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.

Like most people who live in India, I complain about corruption, but know that I can live with corrupt men. It is the honest ones I secretly worry about.

Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country.