A lot of times, people think that it doesn't make sense for people to be depressed when they have everything, a loving husband, a successful career, fame and fortune. I wanted to make this point that profound despair can strike anybody.

The requests for blurbs seem to come in waves. I'm not sure what precipitates them. I think it must be excruciating for editors to draft those elaborate letters asking for a blurb, and I know it's torturous for us writers to ask directly. But publishers encourage us to. Rock and a hard place.

When everything does seem out of control, writing fiction is a way I can order that chaos and restore some sort of meaning. I like the playful aspect of writing fiction. You know how it is when we are kids and we make up our worlds: You be this guy, and I am going to be this guy, and we are going to go slay dragons.

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

Changes in our aesthetic tastes have no value or meaning in and of themselves; what has value and meaning is the idea of change itself. Or, better stated: not change in and of itself, but change as an agent or inspiration of modern creations.

There is a strange impulse in many to protect Bible characters and to use them as inspiration... as if sanctification happens as a result of emulation.

If they're not talking about you, you're not doing something; you're not doing anything. So if they're talking about you, you may be doing something right. And when they talk bad about you, you just use it for motivation.

If Leander Paes can be playing in Grand Slams at 44 and Narain Karthikeyan race at 40 and be so successful at it, I see no reason why I can't play at 34. They are my motivation, as they have set targets and standards for people like us to achieve.