If it takes you seven years to write each novel, you need a patron. And I would rather have my corporate self as my patron than any arts council or bestower of grants.

In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.

I think walking is very useful, like sleeping and dreaming, as something that's important to my ability to write.

Well, one thing that has changed is the number of people killed by terrorists in Pakistan. Civilians killed has gone down really quite dramatically. There was a newspaper article here about a month ago that got big headlines which said that civilian deaths from terrorism were down something like 80 percent or 90 percent from their peak of two or three years ago.

The monolithic view that many Americans have of Pakistani culture is as inaccurate as the monolithic view that many Pakistanis have of American culture.

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.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.