All migrants leave their pasts behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxes-but on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementoes and old photographs, until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of migrants to be stripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see rich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.

All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable.

You can't have modern states based on ideas which have been out of date for a thousand years.

Normally when I read, I don't like music playing.

Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.

It may be that the books that were best liked in your lifetime are not the ones that are best liked 100 years later.

It's true that the human body is more vulnerable than the products of the human mind.