Writing is a very lonely occupation. To write you need to concentrate, to concentrate you need to lock yourself away. No distractions; you want your stream of thought uninterrupted.

For me, the day job comes first. That's why I call myself a diplomat who writes, not a writer who masquerades as a diplomat. If the day job demands it, I won't write at all. I write in what I call 'the crevices of my day job', and that comes only on weekends.

My first novel was a challenge to myself. No one had an inkling that I was working on it.

I am very interested in human-interest stories emerging from modern India. I get my inspiration and daily dose by reading the 'Hindustan Times.'

Academic qualifications are important and so is financial education. They're both important and schools are forgetting one of them.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

I want to be a commercially viable actor. I want that the distributors and producers should earn the money; then only, you become a bankable actor.

What we have now is a situation where politicians get a whole bunch of money from mainly business interests. Then once they hold that office, they spend all their time in office paying back over and over again those campaign contributions through various favors and contracts and that sort of thing.