I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing.

We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal.

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

I am the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

I can tell you, I grew up with great coaching, and it had nothing to do with sports. I had great parents. I really got some great input from there. They were entrepreneurial, middle-class business people.