If an American teenager were to come to Lahore, they'd have wildly different experiences depending on whom they met. They could party and get drunk and smoke hashish with some, while others would say, "Let's get some religious instruction."

I believe one can gauge a book's impact only after about 10 years.

I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.

Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they'd die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren't big enough to love more than one person like that.

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.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

Literature helps us transcend ourselves.