Morality without religion is like calories without vitamins.

There are two ways of deception; one is by simple deception and the other by compromise.

Nuts, walls and countries easily crack where there is a natural or innate breaking of demarcation.

To be happy, you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion and learnt your place in the world.

I am small. My smallness is my greatness.

To R.K. Narayan: Sometimes good luck brings about a combination of time and mood and I read one of your contributions in The Hindu. And then I am bewitched by the talent and sparkle of it and a joy overwhelms me that one of our people could write so well and think so gently and so brilliantly, and master the Sasenach's tongue so completely. God bless you!

On the language issue: Love for oneself may easily masquerade as love of language and love of language as love of country. Let us not deceive ourselves or others with chauvinistic slogans. The plea of the South is for justice and it should not be put down to parochialism or disruption. We are told to accept Hindi for the sake of unity as if there was no unity now. If greater unity is the need of the hour, is the adoption of Hindi, inspite of the difficulties of the Southerners, calculated to bring about that unity? By no means, I say, with all the earnestness that I can command. I have no axe to grind. I want true emotional integration based on goodwill and a sense of justice and not in illusory paper unity based on an official language; imposed by enactment.