The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaking havoc across the land, a mercenary and utilitarian attitude that demonstrates little empathy for people’s actual well-being, that dismisses imagination and thought, branding passion for knowledge as irrelevant.

Art is as useful as bread.

I finally returned to Iran in 1979, when I got my degree in English and American literature, and stayed for 18 years in the Islamic republic.

That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.

Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.

America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?

What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth.