Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. ...

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music.

I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

A lot of music you might listen to is pretty vapid, it doesn't always deal with our deeper issues. These are the things I'm interested in now, particularly at my age.

Before anything else, we need a new age of Enlightenment. Our present political systems must relinquish their claims on truth, justice and freedom and have to replace them with the search for truth, justice, freedom and reason.

A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself.

The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.