The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyze the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.

Our lives, our stories, flowed into one another's, were no longer our own, individual, discrete.

The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.

To put it as simply as possible: I am not a Muslim.[...] I do not accept the charge of apostacy, because I have never in my adult life affirmed any belief, and what one has not affirmed one can not be said to have apostasized from. The Islam I know states clearly that 'there can be no coercion in matters of religion'. The many Muslims I respect would be horrified by the idea that they belong to their faith purely by virtue of birth, and that a person who freely chose not to be a Muslim could therefore be put to death.

The Christian Coalition is still about Christianity, even if it's an idea of Christianity that many Christians might not go along with.

Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?

I want to write novels. I want to write stories. I want to do the stuff that I became a writer to do.