I'm a storyteller. I feel like the issue of discourse is an important one because there's a lot of political and ideological discourse that goes around, and we relate to that on an intellectual level.

I think that literary forms are losing their capacity to connect people to issues, to the experiences that feel most meaningful to them.

Here's the problem: we are living in a time when the act of reading is changing. The nature of a reader's attention is changing. The capacity for deep literary engagement is changing.

The secret of a happy life is respect. Respect for yourself and respect for others.

I don't feel that as an artist my job is to offer PR propaganda, whether for the good or for the bad.

I consider myself to have been formed by a lot of the locutions and aesthetics and principles of the Muslim way of life, and those are an important part of my childhood and my identity.

The Quran is many different things, and we also have to see the Quran almost as a secondary source commenting on the Old Testament.