The anger is useful too because when things about the world upset you, that is really a fertile feeling to channel into fiction and to put out into books.

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

The ethnocultural connotations of the burkini ban are very strong. It's as absurd as mandating that women have to go topless on the beach. If I were a woman, I definitely would not want to wear a burkini or a headscarf. But it's not about what I want.

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

I like the idea of an open, international London that thrives on attracting hard-working, talented people but has the confidence to tell them they must play by the same rules as everyone else.

Yes, Manila had its slums; one saw them on the drive from the airport: vast districts of men in dirty white undershirts lounging idly in front of auto-repair shops - like a poorer version of the 1950s America depicted in such films as Grease.

Literature helps us transcend ourselves.