A biography for Karan Mahajanhasn’t been written yet.
“As a Punjabi, you only have to look at your own family's past to find horror stories about arranged marriages and brutality.”
“I see flaws as a kind of beauty.”
“American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won't violate one another's privacies. This makes it a land of small talk.”
“I tend to see my characters from inside and outside at once; this is a technique I use to retain a slight distance. It means my characters can act in unexpected ways on two axes: physical and mental. It isn't just, 'I thought this and then I did this,' which is the technique of the modern psychological novel.”
“When I had worked on my first book, I had readily shown bits and pieces to everyone - for encouragement, to force myself to write.”
“I met a number of young, striving, enterprising people in cities like Aligarh and Hubli. But the mental landscape of these towns is out of sync with their reality. Many of these towns are hellholes.”
“In the five months I wrote the final draft of 'The Association of Small Bombs,' I never fell out of the book. The world was real to me: plausible and powerful.”
“Every way he turned, his past was detonated, revealing tunnels and alternative routes under the packed, settled earth of the present.”
“Terrorists are as torn as anyone else.”
“What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?”
“Reading galleys on the subway is the closest the publishing industry comes to having a standardized mating call.”
“The roots of shame run deep.”
“Silence is the small man’s only defense.”
“Literature has become too psychological.”
“American policies toward Asians reached a nadir in 1924, with the implementation of a law that sought 'to preserve the idea of American homogeneity' and denied admission to the country to most non-whites. Immigration from Asia was banned completely, with the establishment of an 'Asiatic Barred Zone.'”
“When more Chinese started coming after the Gold Rush, employed on large projects like the Pacific Railroad, anti-Chinese sentiment became shrill.”
“The thing about a failure is that it is possible to deny it forever.”
“Apparently, the city of Delhi is a 'character' in my novels. I'd argue that it's a ... city... in my novels.”
“I had a thick accent, and people didn't understand me, and I was ashamed, and I fumbled. I radiated an uncertain energy; sometimes baristas sensed this and wouldn't try to talk to me, and then an insecure voice in my head would cry, 'He's racist!'”
“Most of the people in the audience were white and old. They had the gaunt look of people who have seen all the important movies and can now only look forward to reruns.”