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I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

Aravind Adiga

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Aravind Adiga
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: October 23
Film Director
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Madras
Fluent
Many
Daily
Surgeon
City
Tongues
Grew
Surgeons
Cities
Indians
Least
Archipelago
Four
Languages
Madras
Language
Grandfather
Maternal
Used
Tongue

More quotes by Aravind Adiga

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Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad.
Aravind Adiga
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Let animals live like animals let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.
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Neither you nor I speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.
Aravind Adiga
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An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.
Aravind Adiga
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Every book is a kind of struggle, and it's a miracle when it comes out.
Aravind Adiga
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Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.
Aravind Adiga
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If only a man could spit his past out so easily.
Aravind Adiga
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Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.
Aravind Adiga
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The book of your revolution sits in the pit of your belly, young Indian. Crap it out, and read. Instead of which, they're all sitting in front of color TVs and watching cricket and shampoo advertisements.
Aravind Adiga
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Any good society survives on a circulation of favours.
Aravind Adiga
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Because in this world, there is a line: on one side are the men who cannot get things done, and on the other side are the men who can. And not one in a hundred will cross that line. Will you?
Aravind Adiga
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I am not an original thinker-but I am an original listener.)
Aravind Adiga
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In terms of formal education, I may somewhat lacking. I never finished school. I am a self-taught entrepreneur, that's the best kind there is, trust me
Aravind Adiga
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At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society.
Aravind Adiga
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See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.
Aravind Adiga
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When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.
Aravind Adiga
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With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.
Aravind Adiga
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India's great economic boom, the arrival of the Internet and outsourcing, have broken the wall between provincial India and the world.
Aravind Adiga
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Inconvenience in progress, work is regretted.
Aravind Adiga
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Nothing can stop a living thing that wants to be free
Aravind Adiga