When I write about a 15-year old I jump I return to the days when I was that age. It's like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

In an age of incompetence I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.

Anyone who writes an autobiographical work at the age of 34 is at best presumptuous. It occurred to me that it was time to set the record straight.

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry I was listening to European classical music.

I think the sport of wrestling which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34 kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long and the age of the great epics is past.

Each age it is found must write its own books or rather each generation for the next succeeding.