If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English.

Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have read in Arabic.

Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference.

It does not take much to imagine the humanity of people you don't know.

English is a forgiving language. It's not like Classical Arabic and it's not like French. You can speak broken English and be expressive and no one will hold it against you.

Translated books rarely get reviewed in the press. Books or poems or works of art that don't seem to have a corresponding style or figure or theme, obviously they're hard to digest.

We like to look out on the world and see ourselves, so we have many, many novels, memoirs, and short stories in Iraq that are largely about Americans in Iraq, doing what Americans do.

Noir is where the clarity of moral divisions break down, the black and whites turn into grays.

When you're writing your own fiction, you don't have to ride two horses.

Once you have the first draft it's living, and you can coax it to grow and trim it and reshape it and so on. But get that first draft.

I think if I'd gone to an MFA program and learned that, it would have been money well spent. But translation has been that for me.

I discovered in nature the non utilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception.

I hope that while so many people are out smelling the flowers, someone is taking the time to plant some.

You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.

The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang.

I am personally convinced of the great power and deep significance of Christianity, and I won't allow any other religion to be promoted.

When happiness becomes our standard for judging truth, things that make us happy give us permission to do some things that otherwise would be considered wrong.

The Jewish women like Bethany Mandel fare the worst, because they are getting both antisemitic stuff and anti-woman stuff.

Ay-firmative,' Eve said, and tried for a smile. 'Sorry. An Aliens reference always makes me feel better at times like this. Exept I'm not sure I'm the one who lives through the movie.

In tyranny lies only failure. Empower every man and you will gain strength.

If we knew exactly what animal life was like before the fall into sin and knew what nature was like before the law of entropy invaded it, we would already be living in heaven.