You know, you get a bad review as a writer, you remember it for 10 years. You get a hundred good reviews, you forget them all. You say hello to a hundred people in the city and it doesn't mean anything to you. One racist comment passes by, and it sticks with you a decade.

I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.

I am a strong believer in the intertwined nature of the personal and the political; I think they move together.

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.

I actually feel that personal matters, like religion and spirituality, are things that I really discuss only with intimates. I think it's, in a way, like sexuality, something where it touches upon something very private.

One ought not to encourage beggars, and yes, you are right, it is far better to donate to charities that address the causes of poverty rather than to him, a creature who is merely its symptom.

Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this was from me?'