The paralysis that we have right now when we think about migration is partly because we can't imagine what the world would look like in the future. So I think it's important for writers and artists to try to imagine that.

We need to start imagining the future or it will get imagined for us, and the ways that it has been imagined thus far don't seem very attractive.

We keep the negative stuff because it's the negative stuff that's going to, you know, potentially kill us. That fin in the water - maybe it is a shark. That yellow thing behind the tree - maybe it is a lion. You need to be scared.

The ban on the burkini, which is basically a wetsuit, seems particularly ridiculous.

If the dominant political expression that we're seeing right now is of nostalgia and we know that nostalgia won't really work out, what happens is, we become depressed as individuals and societies - when we're depressed, we're much more vulnerable to be taken advantage of by demagogues and xenophobes.

The monolithic view that many Americans have of Pakistani culture is as inaccurate as the monolithic view that many Pakistanis have of American culture.

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.