But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create.

I think sometimes feeling that you've been marginalized opens you up to the realization that, in their own lives, almost everyone experiences marginalization, a kind of foreigner sense.

I don't listen to music when I write. I need silence so I can hear the sound of the words.

If the dominant political expression that we're seeing right now is of nostalgia and we know that nostalgia won't really work out, what happens is, we become depressed as individuals and societies - when we're depressed, we're much more vulnerable to be taken advantage of by demagogues and xenophobes.

It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books . . .

I think walking is very useful, like sleeping and dreaming, as something that's important to my ability to write.

My mother has been to Mecca to perform her hajj; my dad hasn't. I come from a very liberal family, so even the people who are outwardly religious tend to subscribe to gender equality, the importance of open-mindedness, all that stuff. My family is generally nonprescriptive.