Time is our most precious currency. So it's significant that we are being encouraged, wherever possible, to think of our attention not as expenditure but as consumption. This blurring of labor and entertainment forms the basis, for example, of the financial alchemy that conjures deca-billion-dollar valuations for social-networking companies.

We can open up our computers and Skype with someone, and we see them. It's like looking through a window. And we can surf the internet through our phones, and it's like our consciousness is far away. Or we can step through a airplane door and be in another continent a few hours away. So technology feels, to me, like the doors sort of already exist, at least emotionally.

I think massive migration is inevitable. As sea levels rise, as climate change happens, as fertile fields become arid, as wars are fought, people are going to move. They always have.

The notion of love as a potentially destructive and potentially redemptive human force is something that comes across in all my books.

If differences can be hidden, perhaps they aren't differences at all.

All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.