The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.

The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.

If differences can be hidden, perhaps they aren't differences at all.

We can open up our computers and Skype with someone, and we see them. It's like looking through a window. And we can surf the internet through our phones, and it's like our consciousness is far away. Or we can step through a airplane door and be in another continent a few hours away. So technology feels, to me, like the doors sort of already exist, at least emotionally.

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

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

Sometimes we are looking for somebody we can connect with on the basis of a shared past or a tradition or experience. And so finding that you're sitting next to someone very much like you in terms of where they come from is enormously reassuring.