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.

We, as writers, have to figure out a way to create a consciousness in language. It's crazy even to attempt to do that.

I'm not nervous if I think about something for nine years and then I don't write it. Even if it fades it doesn't concern me. It'll come back if it's worth it.

If you find yourself as a person in unfamiliar territory, you will grasp on to what is already familiar.

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

There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.

There is a point in fighting. There is a point in struggle. Not wholesale revolution, maybe, that might not be possible, an absolutely just society, but there are plenty of spaces and places where it's worth putting up a fight.