When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.

And also I think the rise of other, you could say, destinations for international jihadis mean that Pakistan isn't necessarily the place where people from all over the world who want to engage in these activities gravitate to. They're going now to places like Syria or Yemen Libya, elsewhere.

I think walking is very useful, like sleeping and dreaming, as something that's important to my ability to write.

I think that things were getting really very bad a couple of years ago, and there's been a very significant change in response to that on the part of the security forces and the government, but particularly the army. And you see Pakistan actually fighting terrorism and terrorists in a much more wholehearted way than had been occurring previously. It's not anywhere close to over yet, but you've seen a big change in the antiterrorism campaign here.

When people talk about the death of the novel, they are speaking of the need for the birth of something different.

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.