I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation. I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy.

Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage I think that lead us from an innocent world of contentment drunkenness and good humor to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

In prehistoric times mankind often had only two choices in crisis situations: fight or flee. In modern times humor offers us a third alternative fight flee - or laugh.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

With our knowledge of modern-day genetics we realize that it was possible for God to place the potential for all people throughout history into the genes of Adam and Eve when He created them.

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens some of Zola 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and in modern drama Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

India is a curious place that still preserves the past religions and its history. No matter how modern India becomes it is still very much an old country.

The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages was not suddenly abolished in modern times.

I'm trying to make a case for those people who don't have a sense of belonging that they should have that there is something really worthwhile in having a sense of belonging and recasting and looking at our modern history.

The truth is of course that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.