I think that we live in a world - and this is something which living in Pakistan, perhaps, has taught me - and, you know, we live in a world where there is a constant feed from social media, the news, etc., of things that can scare us. And we become so anxious because human beings are meant - are designed to be sensitized to dangerous stuff.

If your sense of self is destabilised, to imagine being another becomes pretty easy.

One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty rather than to him, a creature who is merely its symptom.

If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.

The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can't imagine what the world would look like in the future. So I think it's important for writers and artists to try to imagine that.

You know, you get a bad review as a writer, you remember it for 10 years. You get a hundred good reviews, you forget them all. You say hello to a hundred people in the city and it doesn't mean anything to you. One racist comment passes by, and it sticks with you a decade.

think that the external situation has also changed somewhat. The reduction of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has, in a sense, reduced how inflamed the situation on the Pakistani border regions was and is.