I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.

It was a personal decision for me to stand and say that cricket is all I have in life, there’s nothing I need to do other than cricket. If I want to achieve whatever I thought as a kid, I need to work hard and not let it go to waste.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

From the boys‘ point of view, scouting puts them into fraternity-gangs, which is their natural organisation, whether for games, mischief, or loafing; it gives them a smart dress and equipments; it appeals to their imagination and romance; and it engages them in an active, open-air life.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

I only act from my heart.

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

I don’t tell anyone how to write and no one tells me.

There’s a reason that I have confidence out there, and it’s about how I prepare for games and for series and seasons and whatnot, so we’ve got to stick with that kind of thought process.

Writing music is just like writing a book.

All the top players in the world play 45-50-60 games. You need that many games, even the strikers need that many games.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

In T20, you don’t have time to get distracted – it’s so quick, you have to run around in the field, and while batting, you don’t actually think about anything else.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

We love things we love what they are.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

My priority is cricket. Everything that I get apart from it is a result of the effort on the field. Everything else follows. I am pretty aware of my priorities, and I don’t really focus on things that are not as important to me as cricket.

Never regret what you don’t write.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

After the 12th class exam results, I got a call from Mohun Bagan. They saw me at Durand Cup when I was playing for City Club of Delhi. I thought they might want me for SAIL Academy. Never ever I thought Mohun Bagan is calling me for Mohun Bagan!

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Many people have an intense feeling about what they’re best at. Too often, they’re driven away from it by other people.

I want to elongate my cricketing career as a consistent player. I have personal goals I would like to achieve someday.

If it wasn’t for baseball, I’d be in either the penitentiary or the cemetery.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

The actual business of writing dialogue is not thought of as a craft.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

They say it is the first step that costs the effort. I do not find it so. I am sure I could write unlimited ‚first chapters‘. I have indeed written many.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

If a leader doesn’t convey passion and intensity then there will be no passion and intensity within the organization and they’ll start to fall down and get depressed.

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

The old Dodgers were something special, but of my teammates overall, there was nobody like Pee Wee Reese for me.

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.