I think the idea of migration through time is very important because every human being does that and it unites us with people who migrate through geography.

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

There's a reason prophets perform miracles; language lacks the power to describe faith.

Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimise the importance of the individual and maximise the importance of the group. Yet our instinctive stance ought to be one of suspicion towards such endeavours. For individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion.

In Italian, the word for novel is romanzo, "the romance." The English is "novel" - something new. Both of those elements, experimentation and love, are fundamental to the form.

Love is transient even on a very personal level. We lose everyone that we love. Sometimes we drift apart and sometimes we die.

For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the US as a geopolitical player.