If you can't go home, there is nowhere to go, and nowhere is the biggest place in the world-indeed, nowhere is the world.

You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

Arabs are a complete abstraction in the propaganda world and all the death and destruction is completely unreal to Americans.

Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared, and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.

The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.

I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm better than them.

I know a lot of people in the city, at all levels, horizontally and vertically - and that to me is a privilege, to me as a person but also a writer. I've dined with billionaires, and I play soccer with busboys.