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.

I take six or seven years to write really small books. There is a kind of aesthetic of leanness, of brevity.

So in many ways, the bombing at the end of this year and the terrorist attack of last year in Peshawar have bookended both those years in a very unfortunate way. But at a bigger picture since, the impression in Pakistan is that things are actually improving on the terrorism front quite dramatically.

One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty rather than to him, a creature who is merely its symptom.

What else is belief but direction?

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.

Novel writing is solitary work.