It's important to have a non-nostalgic view and say, let's look forward, because if we don't, all we'll hear are voices telling us to go back.

With movement, families get split. With the politicization of religion, spirituality gets diluted. With people intermarrying and falling in love outside of pre-existing defined groups, the tribe is disappearing. I'm not in favor of going back to those things, but you can't take those things away without putting something new in its place. So finding a way to make transience more acceptable, even beautiful is key.

I don't want to be a Michael Moore-style artist, which is not to disparage Michael Moore. But he seems rather unsuccessful at winning people over who don't already agree with him.

The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.

If an American teenager were to come to Lahore, they'd have wildly different experiences depending on whom they met. They could party and get drunk and smoke hashish with some, while others would say, "Let's get some religious instruction."

And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.

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.