News has a way of distancing us from events, even as it informs us about them. News articles almost always present both the event and the responses at the same time - how is President Barack Obama or Congress responding to the events? I think this reflects a deep need we have to feel that things are under control and that events are subject to our influence.
Zia Haider RahmanThere was a period of a few months, however, when I had a dreadful physical pain. I had just started writing a particular section of the novel and was initially worried that it would affect my work. I was woken by awful nightmares; I saw several doctors, tests were performed, nothing came of them, and the medics were mystified.It was two days after I finished writing the section that the penny dropped. The pain had suddenly disappeared and so too had the nightmares. I'd got things muddled. The pain and the nightmares were both psychosomatic.
Zia Haider RahmanThere have been studies concluding that most people mostly know people only within their own social class - although such a conclusion would hardly surprise anyone. I think there's evidence to suggest that it's even narrower - the great majority of friends of Ivy Leaguers, for instance, are Ivy Leaguers. This narrows the pool of people who can write fiction cutting across class boundaries that's informed by their own personal experience.
Zia Haider RahmanOur interaction with our friends, for instance, is in large part an interaction with representations in our own head of the people before us. That's why a friend can surprise or disappoint us.
Zia Haider RahmanI am at my happiest when I'm problem solving and a large part of writing is for me a lovely labor in problem solving. Every act of discovery in writing involves a process of figuring out why I'm not seeing what I need to see. Niggling feelings, discomforts, a sense that you've forgotten or overlooked something, a sudden curiosity about what if here? - these are priceless. They are the bases of problems and lead the way.
Zia Haider RahmanI am sympathetic to the kind of faith that does not evangelize or raise banners but is the faith drawn on by a lone human being as a means of support or as an organizing principle or even as mere practice. It is faith that is born of humility and an understanding of one's own frailty. I can recognize it because I have met many people who exhibit this kind of faith.
Zia Haider Rahman