If differences can be hidden, perhaps they aren't differences at all.

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

What did I think of Princeton? Well, the answer to that question requires a story. When I first arrived, I looked around me at the Gothic buildings - younger, I later learned, than many of the mosques of this city, but made through acid treatment and ingenious stone-masonry to look older.

And with a last stardrop, a last circle, I arrive, and she's there, chemical wonder in her eyes.

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.

In a way, every parent is sort of dependent on the benevolence of the society around them to take care of their children.

Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.