Top 50 Ruskin Bond Quotes

I don’t overwork – a couple of hours a day is fine for me.

Books of exploration have always fascinated me, like somebody going up the Amazon for the first time.

I wanted to be a tap dancer when I was very young.

Yes, I do seek solitude, but I am never lonely.

If four or five days go by, and I haven’t written anything, I feel incomplete.

I find it very lucky to be an Indian and living in India.

I think every writer wants future generations to read what he has written.

I am a very personal writer. I write direct to the reader. I don’t hold back.

I’m not very good at writing fantasy or even reading it.

The ghost story is a popular genre of mine and is particularly adaptable to the visual media.

When I ventured into writing at the age of 17, I wanted to be a good and successful writer. I just wanted to write good stuff – poems, prose, stories, essays, everything.

No, I don’t want to be a brand. Brand means I cannot go out for a quiet walk without tourists and fans constantly following me.

Jokes apart, I, like many other, am looking for strong and stable government. I don’t want any chaotic political situation where the elected government is being toppled frequently.

I have been apolitical all my life.

Respect the language in which you write. Be kind, develop good vocabulary, and be creative in writing beautiful sentences. Your prose should be your poetry when you write.

I used to consider myself a loner.

For the film ‘Saat Khoon Maaf,’ which was adapted from my story ‘Susanna’s Seven Husbands,’ I did collaborate on the screenplay. I even took a small role in the film, of a priest.

I love to sleep.

The Nehru years were rather very peaceful years. A lot happened in those years: dams were built, five-year plans were made, Chandigarh was built in front of my eyes. Those were the years I grew up in.

When I was younger, I took life much more seriously.

I do all my thinking lying down.

In my twenties, I wrote a lot of romantic stories in which I always lost the girl.

When I was growing up, I remember having read all the books in the library. I often tried to emulate my favourite writers.

I fortunately have a good memor, and that helps a lot in the way I write.

I like flowers. In my next life, maybe I can be a gardener.

I’ve lived in small rooms, flats, growing plants in pots on window sills. I’d have liked to have had a full-fledged garden with all kinds of flowers and plants. I’ve never had enough money to buy a big enough garden space.

All my works over the years have been autobiographical in the sense they reflect some part of my life, although I have fictionalised them to an extent.

I may not have become a good writer, but I managed to make a living out of writing.

I’ve never written specifically for children as such. I write to please myself, and if it is suitable, it gets printed as a children’s book.

I always look for a bookshop wherever I go.

Holidays can become tedious without something to read.

The transition from an English father to a Punjabi stepfather demanded an adjustment that was far from easy for a 10-year-old boy who had just lost his father.

If I’m really immersed in a story, I try to finish it in a few days. If it’s a longer work, then it would take a few months.

I suppose in the long run, it’s the good work that outlasts the shoddy work, but there’s enough room for all kinds of writing.

Many people told me such convincing ghost stories that I felt that there really were ghosts, though I hadn’t seen any. And though I still haven’t seen a ghost, I feel that they are all around us; we are just not aware of them being there.

Writing for children may have kept me young at heart.

I wrote ‘Time Stops at Shamli’ in 1956, shortly after ‘The Room on the Roof’ was published, and I couldn’t find anyone to publish it.

A few years after my father’s death, my mother sent me to the United Kingdom for ‘better prospects’ in 1951. Those four years were not easy.

My mother wanted me to join the Indian army, as the army was seen as a decent and respectable career to have. I shocked my mother by telling her that I wanted to be a writer.

I’m rather fond of my awards.

It is okay to experiment with language. Writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf experimented with writing, but basically, one must have a familiarity with the language. And to have that, one must respect it.

Change has to come. It’s not always what you’d like. It’s what other people like.

A lot of school-going children are familiar with my writing. I am basically very much a children books author.

If you live in America, you need a gun, and I am not very fast with a gun, so I think I would walk out very quickly.

Writing is the only thing I am good for.

I like talking to visitors, especially children.

I think I’m from the 18th century, not even the 19th. I don’t even use a typewriter. I prefer longhand, and that’s how I submit my manuscripts to my publishers.

My first, ‘Room on the Roof,’ was the longest book I’ve written.

I am hopeless with machinery. I could never learn to drive a car except into a wall.

As you grow older, life seems funnier.