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

And also I think the rise of other, you could say, destinations for international jihadis mean that Pakistan isn't necessarily the place where people from all over the world who want to engage in these activities gravitate to. They're going now to places like Syria or Yemen Libya, elsewhere.

I don't know if I'm truly at home in any language.

Walking is very good for writers. There's something fundamentally useful about not talking to anybody, not looking at a screen, and being in nature - even if that nature is an urban environment.

It is the effect of scarcity; one’s rules of propriety make one thirst for the improper.

I don't think the function of writing, at least for me as a fiction writer, is to say to people, "Here's the answer." It's not an op-ed.

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?