“England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a ...” — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Quote

“England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a world of my own, I made up for my disinheritance by absorbing the world of others... I loved them: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens... I adopted them passionately.”

“I am a central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis. I am irritable and have weak nerves.”

“All my early books are written as if I were Indian. In England, I had started writing as if I were English; now I write as if I were American. You take other people's backgrounds and characters; Keats called it negative capability.”

“I feel that Italy's a country that's constantly looking out and constantly following what's happening in other cultural centers. What is being written in America, what is being published in England, what is being published in France. It's a culture that's always wanting to absorb and inform itself of other works, other writers, etc., etc.”

“I'm a big fan of simplicity, especially with songs and I try not to make them complicated. I just make them simple and let people absorb that message themselves. That's my theory.”