What used to help us to cope with transience was stuff like, extended families all living in one place, or very strong religious beliefs, or a tribe that would outlive you. That stuff is getting weaker.

All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.

If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.

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

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

I would have bet money that Britain would not vote to leave the EU, and I would have been wrong. I would have bet money that Trump would not have been the Republican nominee, and I would have been wrong and I certainly would have bet money that he wouldn't win the election.

I don't want to be anxious on my day-to-day life. I want to try to imagine a future I'd like to live in and then write books and do things that, in my own small way, make it more likely that that future will come to exist.