I like the idea of an open, international London that thrives on attracting hard-working, talented people but has the confidence to tell them they must play by the same rules as everyone else.

The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.

The mountain trembled like an earthquake. Dust flew into the sky. And the rock turned dark red, like the color of blood'. 'How would you know?' Asks Sindhi cap. 'You only have a black and white television'. 'But it's a very good one. You can almost see colours.

Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.

In Italian, the word for novel is romanzo, "the romance." The English is "novel" - something new. Both of those elements, experimentation and love, are fundamental to the form.

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.'

There really still is a deep wound, you know, in the collective psyche of Pakistan. And the violence has left enormous human and emotional and psychic damage. That's not going to go away. But that said, I think I'm cautiously optimistic that we're looking at a better future.