England gave me a language and literature, the basis of what I am as a writer, but when I started writing more directly about my own experience, it wasn't England so much as what went before. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a world of my own, I made up for my disinheritance by absorbing the world of others... I loved them: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens... I adopted… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
I only really woke up in India. It was my first experience of plenty, strangely enough, because everything in England was rationed. I loved… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
Film is not like a book; it's not a writer's baby at all. So many people have put in their talent, by that time… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
It's technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
The misfortune to be born when I was, where I was. That was a piece of bad luck. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
I never really had any close friends in India, and I felt a terrible loneliness and isolation for many years. Westernized Indians don't like… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
First, I was so dazzled and besotted by India. People said the poverty was biblical, and I'm afraid that was my attitude, too. It's… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
Perhaps I'm just fickle by nature and get tired of countries the way other women do of husbands or lovers. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
I am dissatisfied with everything I have ever written and regard it all only as a preparation for that one work which probably I… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
I'm not interested in who am I. I'm interested in what's gone, the disinheritance, what I've been able to become or learn or fuse… — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
Westernized Indians don't like my books and I tend not to like westernized Indians - so we're quits. — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Copy Share Image
