A beard is something that is almost like a mirror to the viewer. When someone sees you wearing a beard, they're seeing something in their own imagination because it's still me whether I'm bearded or not.

Readers don't work for writers. They work for themselves.

You can live in the same city your entire life and still be completely a foreigner when you step out, in your old age, onto the street.

In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.

I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography.

Walking is a meditative act. It's so rare that we allow ourselves just to be.

For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the US as a geopolitical player.