Walking is very good for writers. There's something fundamentally useful about not talking to anybody, not looking at a screen, and being in nature - even if that nature is an urban environment.

I think we should be prepared, given environmental and political change for large-scale migration. If sea levels rise and 200 million people in Bangladesh and 300 million people in Indonesia need to move, and the entire Chinese seaboard, New York City - that's going to be huge.

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.

It's important to have a non-nostalgic view and say, let's look forward, because if we don't, all we'll hear are voices telling us to go back.

As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.

Farmers and people who make a living from the land are finding it impossible to survive. So the first step is to get out of that place. Come to the city where there are opportunities.

And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.