Quotes from Karan Mahajan

Every time a blast happens, people ask, 'But why would someone do this?' Weirdly, it hasn't been answered well anywhere - neither in fiction nor non-fiction.

'This Is Not That Dawn' is remarkable in part for its careful and sensitive attention to women's lives - and also for its harsh critique of men and their failure to stop violence.

As a Punjabi, you only have to look at your own family's past to find horror stories about arranged marriages and brutality.

When a certain swathe of India's population considers the country's ancient past, it doesn't see a country fragmented into kingdoms, savaged by caste divisions, and mired in poverty; rather, what's envisioned is a vast, unified Hindu empire stretching from Kashmir to the Indian tip at Kanyakumari.

Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'

Reading galleys on the subway is the closest the publishing industry comes to having a standardized mating call.

For whatever reason, people know that car crashes can happen but they don't live with that fear every day when they're driving, or they're able to overcome it.

There's a hustling, but also a self-centred vibe you can get from people in Delhi.