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.

Love is transient even on a very personal level. We lose everyone that we love. Sometimes we drift apart and sometimes we die.

With movement, families get split. With the politicization of religion, spirituality gets diluted. With people intermarrying and falling in love outside of pre-existing defined groups, the tribe is disappearing. I'm not in favor of going back to those things, but you can't take those things away without putting something new in its place. So finding a way to make transience more acceptable, even beautiful is key.

I think sometimes feeling that you've been marginalized opens you up to the realization that, in their own lives, almost everyone experiences marginalization, a kind of foreigner sense.

Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora.

Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.

I think writing is a very political act. I think that any writer who says it's not, is simply a writer who is disavowing the political connotations of what they write.