When we aren't collectively imagining hopeful futures, then the way things are going almost invariably seems negative and frightening.

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

Walking is very good for writers. There's something fundamentally useful about not talking to anybody, not looking at a screen, and being in nature - even if that nature is an urban environment.

If we try to 'protect ourselves', our nation-states begin to look like prisons.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.

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.