“Ambition is the capacity for unhappiness.”

“After riding like a moron all over the place, observes the face of an Indian when he crashes. He is stunned.”

“Scientists want to search for alien signals because that's what gets them publicity. They are like Jesus Christ.""Jesus Christ?" Nambodri asked, with a faintly derogatory chuckle."Yes. They are exactly like Jesus Christ. You know that he turned water into wine.""I've heard that story.""From the point of view of pure chemistry, it is more miraculous to make wine into water than water into wine. But he did not do that. Because if he had gone to someone's house and converted their wine into water, they would have crucified him much earlier. He knew, Jana. He knew making water into wine was a more popular thing to do.”

“The extraordinary triumph of the cellphone among India’s poor stemmed from its ability to enable a most mundane human need, which is to chat with other people. And when the poor chat, it is not always about curing a child of diarrhea.”

“The unfortunate are not as miserable as the world imagines. That urchins, the handicapped, orphans, prisoners and others are much happier than people think. And that language is a trap, that a dark evolutionary force has created languages to limit human thought. That writers are overrated fools. That all religions come from ancient comic writers. And the ultimate goal of comics is same as the purpose of humanity – to break free from language.”

“Ambition is the capacity for unhappiness.”

“The distinction between a delusion and a lie is the very difference between a successful saint and a fraud.”

“And all our gods are not lies. They existed. All our gods, from the beginning of time, have been men with psychiatric conditions. And their delusions were so deep, they passed them on.”

“Strong people write bad stories.”

“It is a misfortune to be in the presence of a writer, even a failed writer, to be seen by him, be his passing study and remain in his corrupt memory. It is like the insult of a corpse on the road by a war photographer.”

“Men do things. We can't help it. That's all there is to it. As you will discover in time, the primary choice every man has to make is whether he wants to be himself or if he wants peace.”