I think sometimes feeling that you've been marginalized opens you up to the realization that, in their own lives, almost everyone experiences marginalization, a kind of foreigner sense.

I think writing is a very political act. I think that any writer who says it's not, is simply a writer who is disavowing the political connotations of what they write.

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

I think that we live in a world - and this is something which living in Pakistan, perhaps, has taught me - and, you know, we live in a world where there is a constant feed from social media, the news, etc., of things that can scare us. And we become so anxious because human beings are meant - are designed to be sensitized to dangerous stuff.

I think that people are going to move. They always have and that's going to continue. The question is, how are we going to deal with it?

In some contexts in Pakistan maybe a beard is negative. It depends. And in some contexts in America maybe a beard is positive. I think there's certainly lots of hipster communities where having a beard makes me look a little bit less like a, you know, middle-aged fuddy-duddy. And there's some places in Pakistan where having a beard, you know, certain corporate contexts, certain social contexts, where it's not an advantage to have a beard.

There really still is a deep wound, you know, in the collective psyche of Pakistan. And the violence has left enormous human and emotional and psychic damage. That's not going to go away. But that said, I think I'm cautiously optimistic that we're looking at a better future.