I don't think any writer is a friend to the reader if he or she is not funny. — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
I like listening to Garrison Keillor's 'The Writer's Almanac' with my daughter. — Amitava Kumar Children Copy Share Image
India's nuclear-test blasts have pretty much put to rest the myth of Indians being peace-loving Gandhians. — Amitava Kumar Being Copy Share Image
Capitalism might everywhere be spreading havoc, but it is also triumphant everywhere. — Amitava Kumar Also Copy Share Image
Imagination makes us shape better stories, sure, but it also allows us to multiply possibilities. — Amitava Kumar Better Copy Share Image
Like every other self-respecting academic, I'm distrustful of self-help books. — Amitava Kumar Books Copy Share Image
Writers interest me for their style, their obsessions, the ways in which they approach the world. — Amitava Kumar Interest Copy Share Image
Writing gives me the license to go, explore, and learn about the world. — Amitava Kumar About Copy Share Image
For some members of the radical Left, particularly in the West, people in developing countries are an ideological abstraction, on whom fantasies… — Amitava Kumar Developing countries Copy Share Image
In fiction, you don't invent the events. What is imaginative about it is the consciousness: how you think about the events and… — Amitava Kumar Consciousness Copy Share Image
My past makes me an insider, but my profession makes me an outsider. A writer always stands outside to report on reality. — Amitava Kumar Always 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.… — Amitava Kumar Be the first Copy Share Image
Governance in India comes in the iron-clad armour of bureaucracy. Anyone in uniform considers it his or her right that we regard… — Amitava Kumar Bureaucracy Copy Share Image
Mistaken identity, of course, has been the province of much postcolonial fiction. An important feature of this writing is the manner in… — Amitava Kumar Failure Copy Share Image
When I close my eyes and think of a writer, I don't imagine him or her as someone who is sitting above… — Amitava Kumar Blindfolded Copy Share Image
I grew up in India during the 1960s and '70s in a meat-eating Hindu family. Only my mother and my grandparents were… — Amitava Kumar Family Copy Share Image
Even fake news tries to convince us of its reality, but it does so mostly by appealing to your preconceived notions, your… — Amitava Kumar Fake news Copy Share Image
India allows you the luxury of a million inequalities. You can be a schoolboy selling tea to passengers sitting in a state… — Amitava Kumar Fish 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 Bigs Copy Share Image
Does the entry of Indian H-1B worker augur a change in the relations of production in the world of cybertechnology? No, but… — Amitava Kumar Change Copy Share Image
The thing about good art is that it makes you look at things in a new way. — Amitava Kumar Art Copy Share Image
Hindi writing, as well as Hindi journalism, is a great gift to Indian writing. — Amitava Kumar Gift Copy Share Image
“There is no point in fighting condescension with condescension.” — Amitava Kumar Condescension Copy Share Image
All good works of art must ask this question: 'You want to breathe free, yes, but do you know how to kiss?' — Amitava Kumar Art Copy Share Image
To write what is not dead on the page, one has to be open to all kinds of disturbances and challenges and… — Amitava Kumar Challenges Copy Share Image
A postcolonial writer who has often been credited with mixing the mundane with the magical, and history with fiction, is Salman Rushdie. — Amitava Kumar Fiction Copy Share Image
We learn that our lives find narrative form neither in the tired, familiar slogans of our captains nor in the symmetries of… — Amitava Kumar Differences Copy Share Image
Inequality reigns in horrifying ways, and not everyone can even read, but the world of media and advertising withholds very little from… — Amitava Kumar Horrifying Copy Share Image
We live in a cynical system where the powerful are able to exploit the demand of the aggressive few, from whichever religion… — Amitava Kumar Cynical 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 Books Copy Share Image
Authenticity does matter, but only as it serves the novel's more traditional literary demands: that the fault lines be drawn where the… — Amitava Kumar Authenticity Copy Share Image
I should not romanticize the simplicity of a village. For instance, the place from where I used to buy a packet of… — Amitava Kumar Now 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 Books Copy Share Image
There is a great deal of freshness and charm in '400 Blows.' There is also a great deal of visual poetry in… — Amitava Kumar Artist Copy Share Image
A writer can be subjective, even digressive, or introspective and certainly judgmental. This is a simplification, of course, but as a general… — Amitava Kumar General Copy Share Image
