Ruskin Bond Quotes

Writing is the only thing I am good for.

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

Unhappy and unsettled childhood helps in writing.

Solitude helps you reflect.

I keep a big, fat dictionary with me while writing.

I like talking to visitors, especially children.

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.

I use a ball pen because fountain pens are clumsy, and I get ink all over my fingers by the time I finish with it.

Small places intrigue me. Whenever I tried moving to a larger city, I ran back to the hills.

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.

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

I enjoy the process of writing.

Ghosts are all around us. Look for them, and you will find them.

I can’t live in a room without a window.

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.

I keep a journal, like many writers do. It helps in writing a story, as you can use an incident from the journal and put in your story.

I’ve noticed people in India have developed a habit of hugging around people. I don’t understand it now. I wanted to be hugged when I was young. Now, if someone wants to hug me, I feel only claustrophobic.

I’m a pickle fiend. I like all kinds of pickles: garlic pickle, lemon pickle, mango pickle, jackfruit pickle, you name it.

Instead of becoming a great shikari, as my mother and stepfather might have wished, I had become an incurable bookworm and was to remain one for the rest of my life.

One has to be ambitious to start writing.

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

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 an excellent memory – for books and authors, that is. I remember all the books I’ve read.

The books that I wrote in my late teens and 20s, the little love stories, they were right from the heart.

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’m rather fond of my awards.

I get inspiration from a lot of things around me – nature, hills, people, and even insects.

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.

Whenever I run out of people to write about, I cook up a few ghosts, or they appear before me.

Films and books have been intertwined as far as my growing up is concerned.

I did all kind of jobs to sustain myself. I worked at a grocery store, in the public health department, and what was then Thomas Cook and Sons. The last job was particularly interesting, but I got fired from it.

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

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

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

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.

I won’t usually just sit down to write. I’d have done it in my head already. I visualise a story just like a film strip running in my head. I guess that is also a reason why my books have such a visual element to them. And it’s what I tell young writers: plan your story ahead.

In the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, before television became easily accessible, even the most well-known writers were not recognised. The writers remained mostly an anonymous lot then.

I used to consider myself a loner.

As you grow older, life seems funnier.

I had a bad habit of falling in love with any girl who was nice to me.

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

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

Sometimes good stories are created while documenting dreams.

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

You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.

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.

One of the very first ghost stories I read – and that was in a forest rest house, where it is a bit scarier – was by M.R. James. He is one of the pioneers of ghost stories. And the book was called ‘Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary.’

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

I wouldn’t want a film to be made on my life, because I suppose I would only want them to show all the good things about me and hide the awful things, and that wouldn’t be a very honest biopic, no?

I do all my thinking lying down.

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.

It’s amazing to dwell in the world of fantasy and fear.

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

As a schoolboy, I loved Charles Dickens. His ‘David Copperfield’ has had the strongest influence on me – I looked up to David Copperfield as a role model.

If you enjoy your journey as a writer, you will never find it difficult to write.

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

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.

There will always be books as long as I am mentally capable of it.

The older you get, the lesser you are bothered by what others think.