When people, particularly young people and especially young men, can't imagine themselves as heroes in narratives that they construct for themselves, they look to be heroes in some other way. So young men in America of, let's say, Muslim background, only a tiny, tiny minority - so small as to be almost zero - are likely to ever commit terrorist acts.

Why the brevity? Because I'd rather people read my book twice than only half-way through

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.

The gun of the father is always the undoing of the son.

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

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

A reader should encounter themselves in a novel, I think.