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"‘This is a very ambitious one. I wanted to suggest an Indian writer writing about India, after having spent many years abroad, or living there. There are hundreds of them — well, if not hundreds, at least twenty-five. I find these people absurd, full with one mixed-up culture and writing about another, what kind of audience are they aiming at. That's why their India is just not real, a place of fantasy, or of confused metaphysics, a sub-continent of goons. All their Indians are caricatures. Why is that. Because there really are no universal stories, because each language is an entire culture.’"

"A buffalo passed by, and with a casual whisk of its tail, deposited some dung on his forearm. Oh, you bastard, said Agastya. He scraped the dung off on a tree and smelt his arm. The stench remained. He began to laugh, oh how insane his existence was, it even included getting shit off his arms. "

On the "cultivation" of happiness

"Not that true contentment dignified this infatuated resignation: my work had neither charm for my taste, nor hold on my interest; but it seemed to me a great thing to be without heavy anxiety, and relieved from intimate trial; the negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know."

"Much I marvelled at the sagacity evinced by waiters and chambermaids in proportioning the accommodation to the guest. How could inn-servants and ship-stewardesses everywhere tell at a glance that I, for instance, was an individual of no social significance and little burdened by cash? They did know it, evidently: I saw quite well that they all, in a moment’s calculation, estimated me at about the same fractional value. The fact seemed to me curious and pregnant: I would not disguise from myself what it indicated, yet managed to keep up my spirits pretty well under its pressure."

Definition of a sluggard: "And thus, as alone as could be in the whole world, this young man of thirty-three spent his time, sitting around in a dressing gown without a tie. He did not feel like strolling, like walking, did not even want to go upstairs and have a look at the distances and views, did not even want to open the windows and let some fresh air into his room, and the beautiful view of the countryside, which no visitor could admire with indifference, was as if it did not exist for the owner himself. From this journal the reader can see that Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov belonged to that race of people, so numerous in Russia, who are known as sluggards, lie-abeds, sloths, and the like."