I really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.

I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky. Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing, whisper, taunt me with madness.

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

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

We think of the romance novel as a lesser form of literature, but I don't think that's true. Love is a very important aspect of human life and worth exploring.

If your sense of self is destabilised, to imagine being another becomes pretty easy.