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.

The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.

We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.

I think there's really strong social stratification in South Asia.

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

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 seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.