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.

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.

Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control.

I don't want to test that simple sense of being human. I don't want to transform it.

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 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.

If you want to really deeply touch the viewer or the reader, the theater might be the most powerful way to do it.