NYC doesn't have a big sign saying "You must love diversity and the rights of all people." And that's not what makes you love diversity in NYC or anywhere. What makes you love diversity is because you live in it and you experience it.

When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.

Walking is a meditative act. It's so rare that we allow ourselves just to be.

It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.

I was, in my own eyes, a veritable James Bond — only younger, darker, and possibly better paid.

Some of my relatives held on to imagined memories the way homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction : unserviceable debts, squabbles over inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide.

We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.