Quotes from Ruskin Bond

When I ventured into writing at the age of 17, I wanted to be a good and successful writer. I just wanted to write good stuff - poems, prose, stories, essays, everything.

Books of exploration have always fascinated me, like somebody going up the Amazon for the first time.

I keep a big, fat dictionary with me while writing.

When I was growing up, I remember having read all the books in the library. I often tried to emulate my favourite writers.

I'm rather fond of my awards.

I fortunately have a good memor, and that helps a lot in the way I write.

It's nice to have awards from time to time. There was a time when I had to make a living from my writing, and it wasn't always easy. I value awards a lot - and more so if there is a little cash with them!

As you grow older, life seems funnier.

I've lived in small rooms, flats, growing plants in pots on window sills. I'd have liked to have had a full-fledged garden with all kinds of flowers and plants. I've never had enough money to buy a big enough garden space.

I can't live in a room without a window.

Small places intrigue me. Whenever I tried moving to a larger city, I ran back to the hills.

I think every writer wants future generations to read what he has written.

Many people told me such convincing ghost stories that I felt that there really were ghosts, though I hadn't seen any. And though I still haven't seen a ghost, I feel that they are all around us; we are just not aware of them being there.

Whenever I run out of people to write about, I cook up a few ghosts, or they appear before me.

Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.

I did all kind of jobs to sustain myself. I worked at a grocery store, in the public health department, and what was then Thomas Cook and Sons. The last job was particularly interesting, but I got fired from it.

When we are young, we can put up with a great deal of discomfort in order to follow a dream. If, after thirty-five years, I'm still doing my own thing, it's because I haven't forgotten the dream. Let no man take your dream away. It will sustain you to the end.

Cold weather doesn't care if your coat is old or new.

One sure way to lose the world and everything in it, is to try grasping it.

The pure, the bright, the beautiful, That stirred our hearts in youth, The impulse to a wordless prayer, The dreams of love and truth; The longings after something lost, The spirit's yearning cry, The striving after better hopes … These things can never die.

The other day a young Internet surfer asked me why I preferred using a pencil instead of a computer. The principal reason, I told him, was that I liked chewing on the end of my pencil. A nasty habit, but it helps me concentrate. And I find it extremely difficult to chew on a computer.

The best kind of walk, and this applies to the plains as well as to the hills, is the one in which you have no particular destination when you set out.

She was always ready with her smile, and would willingly have lent it to anyone who was feeling unhappy.

I feel drawn to little temples on lonely hilltops. With the mist swirling round them, and the wind humming in the stunted pines, they absorb some of the magic and mystery of their surroundings and transmit it to the questing pilgrim.