Quotes from Ashwin Sanghi

Conspiracies fascinate me. When I visited the Rozabal shrine in Srinagar before writing my first book, I remember thinking that the person enshrined there was no ordinary mortal. History is rife with mysteries, and that visit ignited a fire to unveil some of them.

I was passionate about reading from an early age, and I would always be carrying a different book each week.

There is one person who can help solve 'writer's block'. His name is Mr. Johnnie Walker.

After writing each novel, I would spend days poring over suggestions from my editor.

The Egyptians saw the sun and called him Ra, the Sun God. He rode across the sky in his chariot until it was time to sleep. Copernicus and Galileo proved otherwise, and poor Ra lost his divinity.

A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.

Of all the writers I have read, Vladimir Nabokov has made the biggest impression on me because he, despite living through the 1917 February Revolution, forced exile amidst the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, the two World Wars and quite a lot of controversy, was an author who never gave up.

What is divine? It is simply that which man has not been able to understand. Once you do, it loses its divinity.

The fundamental difference between books and movies is that the length of a book does not depend upon the capacity of the human bladder.

Battles are won and lost before they are fought.

While I can't walk on water, I can certainly wobble on whisky.

I don't start with the characters. I start with the series of events that will provide the conflict and how it can be resolved. Characters are incidental.

Take the first A out of Abraham and put it at the end. You get Brahama. There's the ancient connection right there.

Though it is very easy to do valuations, eyeballs and brand prominence surveys, you should never allow any of them to influence the balance sheet.

It's foolish to call Chanakya an Indian Machiavelli. Rather, Machiavelli was possibly an Italian Chanakya.

Writing is possibly an art, but crime writing is definitely a craft.

Everyone talks about moderation. How about some moderation in moderation?

The Divine is simply that which science has not yet explained. In effect, God = Infinity - Human Knowledge.

A western audience might not appreciate 'Chanakya's Chant' because of its dependence on history and ancient statecraft. My book is a modern-day thriller that draws on a bedrock of history. My primary object is to entertain, not educate.

An author entices the readers with their words, and it is painful for them to even lose a sentence. But films and books are two different mediums and should be dealt differently. What works in a book might not work for a film. When I saw 'Anna Karenina' on screen, I didn't like it at all, whereas 'The Godfather' was legendary.

Writing helps me create a different world that I can escape to.

The cleanest book on a dusty bookshelf is usually a dirty one.

In Kolkata is a temple where the deity worshipped is Amitabh Bachchan. The daily aarti is performed to the chanting of the Amitabh Chaleesa. And people still ask, 'Could our mythological heroes be based on actual people who once lived?'

There has to be a protagonist who has to overcome challenges, and there will be a race to finish.