If your book is set in the plantation days of the slave-owning South and you write a little romance between two slave owners without acknowledging the system they live, that's a political gesture.

I think there's a natural link between the fact that our self is a story that we make up and that we're drawn to stories. It resonates, in a way.

I don't know if I'm truly at home in any language.

When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.

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.

In a way, every parent is sort of dependent on the benevolence of the society around them to take care of their children.

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.