I come from an enormous and very close family. I have over a dozen aunts and uncles in Pakistan, dozens of cousins. I have many close friends. I have received so much love in Lahore that the city always pulls me.

I think if you say that art and politics, or religion and politics, mustn't mix, don't mix, that is itself a political statement. Even if you are writing a 19th-century novel where the money comes from a plantation in the Caribbean and you don't talk about that, that itself is a political thing.

Like many of my friends in the Pakistani diaspora - and many of my friends in Pakistan itself, for that matter - I have sometimes looked at the country of my birth and wondered whether its future will be one of steady and sad decline.

When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.

I think the most effective forms of critique are ones that establish a common ground for people to occupy, and then appeal to the best nature of people on that common ground.

Sufi poetry is, in a sense, self-help poetry about how to live a decent life, how to deal with your mortality.

When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.

I think there's a growing courage among the younger generation of American writers. Because of the more superficial treatment of characters taking place in cinema, they have had to deal with that by digging deeper into who these people are.

Given enough time, polar bears might migrate off the Arctic ice, evolve darker coats, find a different diet, and thrive in a new, warmer climate. But if the ice on which they depend disappears in a few decades, they are likely to die.