‘... the menu’s a delirious poem/on which the names of Moghlai and Punjabi and Parsi/ — Amit Chaudhuri

‘This second time round, she’d discovered that to be happy was not so much a self-sufficient, spontaneous emotion, such as you might feel in relation to a dream or a secret, but a way of reacting to the rest of the world; that to be happy this time, she must curb the natural human instinct to look up at the sky, with its all-encompassing definition, and gaze towards the immediate ground and horizon, with its lack of shape, or abode, or clear ending.’

‘I’m uncomfortable beginning at the beginning. It’s not because I’m clever, but because it’s a difficult thing, writing.’