I'll tell you what divorce hasn't taught me. It didn't teach me not to get married again.

In a novel, if you're any good, you don't just have good people or bad people. You have complicated people. You have real people.

Reality is a question of perspective.

Many men start being friendly with women because they are trying to seduce them. I'm not trying to seduce them. I just like hanging out with them.

If the culture shifts, if people think differently about women, the art will shift, too. You can't ask art to make social change. It's not what it's for.

Even the Islam stuff I thought was pretty respectful about Islam in a funny way. I mean, yes, from a secular point of view, but it talks about the birth of this religion, and I thought it was pretty admiring of the person at the center of it, the prophet of Islam.

I have never really thought of myself as a writer about religion. And I think one of the things that happened to me as a result of all that is that I think it did for some people, many people, obscure the kind of writer that I actually am.