I've noticed people in India have developed a habit of hugging around people. I don't understand it now. I wanted to be hugged when I was young. Now, if someone wants to hug me, I feel only claustrophobic.

I love to sleep.

Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.

I am a very personal writer. I write direct to the reader. I don't hold back.

I am a compulsive writer.

I keep a big, fat dictionary with me while writing.

I liked the old comic books, especially the funny ones like 'Popeye' and 'Beetle Bailey.'

I have no real regrets.

Small places intrigue me. Whenever I tried moving to a larger city, I ran back to the hills.

One has to be ambitious to start writing.

I have always discouraged young writers from self-publishing, by which I mean going to a vanity publisher and spending your hard earned savings - say, some two-three lakhs - and getting your book printed. It's not published; it's printed!

All my works over the years have been autobiographical in the sense they reflect some part of my life, although I have fictionalised them to an extent.

Books of exploration have always fascinated me, like somebody going up the Amazon for the first time.

I fortunately have a good memor, and that helps a lot in the way I write.

I don't overwork - a couple of hours a day is fine for me.

My desk is right next to my bed. So I sit on my bed. I write in a big notebook which is on the desk. And if I feel drowsy, I just have to slide into bed.

From the age of 17 through my 20s, I was living on my own, so sometimes I wouldn't even tell anybody it was my birthday. It was not a big thing for me.

I'm not very good at writing fantasy or even reading it.

A lot of school-going children are familiar with my writing. I am basically very much a children books author.

Writing for children may have kept me young at heart.

I am hopeless with machinery. I could never learn to drive a car except into a wall.

I did all kind of jobs to sustain myself. I worked at a grocery store, in the public health department, and what was then Thomas Cook and Sons. The last job was particularly interesting, but I got fired from it.

I wanted to be a tap dancer when I was very young.

I find it very lucky to be an Indian and living in India.

When I was younger, I took life much more seriously.

I wouldn't want a film to be made on my life, because I suppose I would only want them to show all the good things about me and hide the awful things, and that wouldn't be a very honest biopic, no?

I think every writer wants future generations to read what he has written.

I write mostly for pleasure, and the reading should ideally be for pleasure, too.

I like talking to visitors, especially children.

When I ventured into writing at the age of 17, I wanted to be a good and successful writer. I just wanted to write good stuff - poems, prose, stories, essays, everything.

Occasionally, I have written about stories related to crime, but I have never attempted a traditional detective story. So I want to write a true detective story.

As you grow older, life seems funnier.

In the '50s, '60s, '70s, before television became easily accessible, even the most well-known writers were not recognised. The writers remained mostly an anonymous lot then.

Unhappy and unsettled childhood helps in writing.

Respect the language in which you write. Be kind, develop good vocabulary, and be creative in writing beautiful sentences. Your prose should be your poetry when you write.

It's amazing to dwell in the world of fantasy and fear.

I enjoy the process of writing.

If four or five days go by, and I haven't written anything, I feel incomplete.

If you enjoy your journey as a writer, you will never find it difficult to write.

I am not really a city person.

I get inspiration from a lot of things around me - nature, hills, people, and even insects.

Ghosts are all around us. Look for them, and you will find them.

I am a sleepy fellow. I will take a nice long nap the first chance I get.

I like flowers. In my next life, maybe I can be a gardener.

You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.

I'm a pickle fiend. I like all kinds of pickles: garlic pickle, lemon pickle, mango pickle, jackfruit pickle, you name it.

I can't live in a room without a window.

Many people told me such convincing ghost stories that I felt that there really were ghosts, though I hadn't seen any. And though I still haven't seen a ghost, I feel that they are all around us; we are just not aware of them being there.

Children haven't changed - the world around them has. Their basic natures haven't changed. They like ice creams. They like to have fun, play games if they get space.

In my twenties, I wrote a lot of romantic stories in which I always lost the girl.