I'm generalizing wildly, but academic books find safety in explanations that reduce the chaos of social life. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Neither the writer nor the reader can save the world by themselves. Or escape it entirely. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
While I ridicule books of self-help, I'm also quite susceptible to them. They help simplify things. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
I have to tell you, when I hear the song 'Jiya ho Bihar ke Lala,' I want to throw the history books… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Like every other self-respecting academic, I'm distrustful of self-help books. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
I don't think any writer is a friend to the reader if he or she is not funny. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
An essay is not an op-ed that tells its reader what to think. An essay is a complicated working-out of one's own… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
I arrived in the U.S. for graduate study in literature in the fall of 1986. I was twenty-three. After a year, I… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
'An Obedient Father' is perhaps the novel that, some might say, Arundhati Roy had wanted to write when she wrote 'The God… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Culture survives in smaller spaces - not in the history books that erect monuments to the nation's grand history but in cafes… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
I've immersed myself in reading more and more of American literature, but no editor has asked me to comment on Jonathan Franzen… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
In 1997, Alain de Botton published his book 'How Proust Can Change Your Life.' I was charmed by it. I remember using… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Michael Ondaatje’s work taught me how to be at home in fragments, and how to think about a big story in carefully… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
For me to say that all novels in English written by Indians are all alike would be a bit like saying that… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
I thought I'd be the first to introduce herbal tea to Patna. White tea, ginger tea, rooibos, camomile. No one touched it. On subsequent… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
We live in a cynical system where the powerful are able to exploit the demand of the aggressive few, from whichever religion or group,… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
For some members of the radical Left, particularly in the West, people in developing countries are an ideological abstraction, on whom fantasies of liberation… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
The writer will write in his or her words, but the readers, even when they are not reading you, will take it elsewhere entirely. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
We learn that our lives find narrative form neither in the tired, familiar slogans of our captains nor in the symmetries of ideological camps,… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
All good works of art must ask this question: 'You want to breathe free, yes, but do you know how to kiss?' — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
An essay is not an op-ed that tells its reader what to think. An essay is a complicated working-out of one's own contradictions and… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
Does the entry of Indian H-1B worker augur a change in the relations of production in the world of cybertechnology? No, but the presence… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
Michael Ondaatje’s work taught me how to be at home in fragments, and how to think about a big story in carefully curated vignettes.… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
The thing about good art is that it makes you look at things in a new way. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and confusion. — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
Inequality reigns in horrifying ways, and not everyone can even read, but the world of media and advertising withholds very little from the imagination… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share
