Love is transient even on a very personal level. We lose everyone that we love. Sometimes we drift apart and sometimes we die.

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.

India to someone who lives in Lahore is like Queens to someone who lives in Lower Manhattan - it's not far away, and yet it doesn't exist.

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.

We're being subject to incredible amounts of surveillance, the police are taking on draconian powers and violating our rights. I think this attempt to protect ourselves is ultimately going to founder because people don't like living inside prisons.

It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.