Writers rarely set out to be national writers. They need small, intimate worlds, full of details; the macro scale of countries, especially those as wide and various as India, cannot be their direct material.

His last years were beset with financial troubles; he drank heavily; he wrote to Chughtai on more than one occasion, pleading with her to find a way for him to come back to India. She was surprised to learn that far from large protests and signed declarations on his behalf, many in Pakistan felt he deserved to be punished. He died on January 18, 1955 in Lahore at the age of forty two.

God commands worship but doesn’t five it. After having spent a few moments with nothingness, he gave life to existence... but where is nothingness now? Like a mother it gave birth to existence and then died in childbirth.

She could crowd a thousand thoughts into her head, but it was, at that moment like a strainer – the more she tried to fill up every little corner, the more emptiness there was.

Engulfed by a sudden emptiness, she was reminded of a train which after discharging passengers at various stations, has finally come to rest, empty at a railway shed.

Literature and film in my opinion are like saloons where bottles have no labels. I want to taste each one myself and figure out which is what. If I’m denied this by labelling, then my entertainment is considerably lessened.

I thought that the Hindus and Muslims would busy themselves in this war and their blood, which did not mix in mosque and temple, would finally mingle in Bombay’s drains and gutters. I.

For me, remembrance of things past has always been a waste of time, and what’s the point of tears? I don’t know. I’ve always been focussed on today. Yesterday and tomorrow hold no interest for me. What had to happen, did, and what will happen, will.

Literature is a symptom of the state of a society.

Manto had earlier been prosecuted in Lahore for obscenity, and one of the words alleged to have been obscene was, “breasts.