When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.

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

The notion of love as a potentially destructive and potentially redemptive human force is something that comes across in all my books.

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.

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.

In America there are people advocating for trans rights and people like Vice President Pence, who is vehemently opposed. In Pakistan, too, you have all kinds of folks - from flamboyant gay fashion designers and female Air Force pilots to the Taliban. A cross-dressed man used to be the top TV talk show host. It was actually quite radical. So the diversity of these societies is often lost on people.

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.