On India and Indians
- "The Indians are a thieving lot." (1949)
- "I do not write for Indians, who in any case do not read. My work is only possible in a liberal, civilised western country." (1979)
- "The thing about being an Indian, and it remains true of Indian writing now, is that it seems to work without history, in a vacuum." (2001)
- "(Gandhi) was uneducated and never a thinker.... He has absolutely no message today." (1999)
- "The Taj is so wasteful, so decadent and...so cruel that it is painful to be there for very long." (1999)
- "The dot means: my head is empty." (On what the bindi Hindu women wear) (1979)
On Pakistan
- "The Pakistani dream is one day there'll be a muslim resurgence and they will lead the prayers in the mosques in Delhi." (2001)
On Britain
- "(Britain) is a country of second-rate people—bum politicians, scruffy writers and crooked aristocrats." (1974)
On Islam
- "Islam is a religion of fixed laws. This goes contrary to everything in modern India." (1999)
On the novel
- "The novel is so bastardised a form, and it's so passing. Everyone writes a novel and it's so much a copy, unconsciously, unwittingly, of novels that have gone before." (2001)
On himself
- "...I don't like my face. I think it looks like the face of a hedonist." (1974)
- "(I) was a prostitute man...the most unsatisfying form of sex."
- "...what I never read is pornography." (1998)
On others
- "(Jane Austen's) work really bored me. It is mere gossip." (1949)
- "(E.M. Forster) is a homosexual and he has his time in India...which his friend Keynes also did...he sodomised (people in the university)." (2001)
- "What's there in (James) Joyce for me.... a man of so little, so little imagination." (1998)
