I think of myself as a narrative artist. I don't think of myself as a novelist or screenwriter or playwright. All of those modalities of processing and experiencing narrative are obviously very different, and I'm not sure that I prefer any one to the other. I think the novel gives you the opportunity to have a kind of interiority that you can't have in the theater, which is pure exteriority.

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

I can't be a spokesman for anything other than my own concerns. I have to be free to wrestle with my own preoccupations, and if I'm bringing any political awareness to that process, that mitigates my freedom.

Religion has been an important part of my understanding, my inquiry into what it means to be human.

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

I have no interest in problematizing things. So what I am writing to is that simple sense of being human in myself.

I think there is a lot of continuity between the Jewish and the Islamic traditions. We know this historically, though people don't want to talk about that - especially Muslims. There is a common source for both Judaism and Islam, or let's say that Islam finds its source in Judaism. The commonalities of practice and sensibility, ethos and mythos, create a lot of overlap.