All art began as sacred art, you know? I mean, all painting began as religious painting. All writing began as religious writing.

One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk.

There are things you break that can't be put back together again. And Kashmir may be one of them.

Free speech is life itself.

I always thought storytelling was like juggling [...] You keep a lot of different tales in the air, and juggle them up and down, and if you're good you don't drop any.

After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price.

A novel, I think, is partly about the contemporary and partly about the eternal, and it's the balance of that that's difficult to achieve.