India to someone who lives in Lahore is like Queens to someone who lives in Lower Manhattan - it's not far away, and yet it doesn't exist.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.

In a subway car, my skin would typically fall in the middle of the color spectrum. On street corners, tourists would ask me for directions. I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.

I think that right now, the global political crisis that we see all over the place has to do with virulent nostalgia. Everywhere, people are talking about taking us back to the good old days. Whether that's the "caliphate," or Britain before the EU, or "Make America Great Again." But, we can't go back and many people wouldn't want to go back even if we could.

I'd rather create a miniature painting than a Taj Mahal of a book.

Literature helps us transcend ourselves.

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.