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

I think writing is a very political act. I think that any writer who says it's not, is simply a writer who is disavowing the political connotations of what they write.

Chance plays a powerful role in every life - our brains and personalities are just chemical soup, after all; a few drops here or there matter enormously - but consequences often become more serious as income levels go down.

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 really do believe that people surprise you. And one of the powerful things about novels is that they're about characters, and those characters live their lives.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.

Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, ancient capital of the Punjab, home to nearly as many people as New York, layered like a sedimentary plain with the accreted history of invaders from the Aryans to the Mongols to the British.