I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.

Pakistan now is like a horror film franchise. You know, it's 'Friday the 13th, Episode 63: The Terrorist from Pakistan.' And each time we hear of Pakistan it's in that context.

When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.

When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.

Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.

America's strength has made it a sort of Gulliver in world affairs: By wiggling its toes it can, often inadvertently, break the arm of a Lilliputian.