What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture.

I am certainly not a good Muslim. But I am able now to say that I am Muslim; in fact it is a source of happiness to say that I am now inside, and a part of the community whose values have always been closest to my heart.

I'm definitely post-something.

One of the characteristics of mudslinging is that mud sticks if it's thrown with enough force for long enough.

You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.

In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.

But love is what we want, not freedom. Who then is the unluckier man? The beloved, who is given his heart's desire and must for ever after fear its loss, or the free man, with his unlooked-for liberty, naked and alone between the captive armies of the earth?