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

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.

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 don't have an ideal reader. I'm trying to reach something simple and, I believe, universal, in every single person.

I feel like that religions generally ask the biggest questions. They may not always have the best answers, but they're the zone of human activity that regularly asks the biggest questions.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

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