It's very good for us to say, as liberals, that we should be moved by everything, but the fact is that there's just so much competing for our attention.

The only solace can come from the state. In the Boston bombing, only a handful of people died in the end, even though a huge number were injured - and that was a huge attack in America. The government was very involved in providing aid and following up in the investigation.

People are rushed and inspired by the success of Indian writers, and are falling over themselves to write novels. Every Indian is writing a novel right now. No one wants to revise.

I think I know a lot of fake two-faced Ivy League liberals, and I am constantly testing them to see if their liberalism is a conversational liberalism, one that depends solely on what will fly at a party. And I can tell when stuff like this happens, I swear to God, they are tomorrow's conservatives.

The West, in the form of American capitalism, is seen as having won, but people are beginning to offer alternatives again, sometimes in retrograde ways like radical Islam.

It's very good for us to say, as liberals, that we should be moved by everything, but the fact is that there's just so much competing for our attention.

terrorism is interesting to a novelist because it's a crime that's driven by an idea, as opposed to some kind of base materialist impulse. It's not like stealing from someone's house, or even assassinating someone. There are very complex ideological reasons behind these almost abstract acts of violence.