I always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel García Márquez, José Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector. I also love a lot of American experimental writers and surrealist European writers. But perhaps The Persian Book of Kings was the greatest influence - I encourage people to look at it. There is such a wealth of incredible stories.

9/11 was just an enormous event in so many senses of the word - I mean, we are still in the "post-9/11 era" and perhaps will be forever? Sometimes it seems like it. It was such a monstrous act of imagination over anything else - the actual fatalities, while awful, were not what distinguished the event from others.

I guess none of the sides of my hyphen are particularly subtle cultures. But perhaps there is also a sense that these characters are all parentless - every character in this book is feral in some way - without any guidance in their upbringing. They find no choice but to seek refuge in extreme behaviors.

The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with theme. Nowadays we have a lot of characters and a lot of action but it's hard to sit still and really meditate on meaning, worldviews, concepts, ideologies even. I make my Illusionist do what I've had to do, often with copious amounts of stumbling and frustration. His real humanity comes from being an artist, I think - his creativity is what makes him a man.

There is less gray area there, less doubt. There is a security in being some thing all the way. Our culture, too, encourages this way of being - exaggeration, for example, is the key to advertising success in the United States. But hyperbole also seems a big part of Iranian culture, as well.

I just see in pop culture, music, visual art, books, etc., a real hunger for the new and different, and I think that's amazing. Satisfying this hunger is part of the responsibility of a creative person.

Being unique seems more desirable than ever. People are exhausted by clichés, by platitudes, by mass-produced realities, by what's been done and done and done. The role of a true artist is to present their own unique vision, and so it has always made sense to me that works of art should be radical.