I actually feel that personal matters, like religion and spirituality, are things that I really discuss only with intimates. I think it's, in a way, like sexuality, something where it touches upon something very private.

How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?

The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.

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

Some of my relatives held on to imagined memories the way homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction : unserviceable debts, squabbles over inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide.

India to someone who lives in Lahore is like Queens to someone who lives in Lower Manhattan - it's not far away, and yet it doesn't exist.