Pakistan hasn't been cast in the role of... interesting cultural place or, you know, land of great comedians.

Childbirth changed my perception of my wife. She was now the bloodied special forces soldier who had fought and risked everything for our family.

Islam is not a race, yet Islamophobia partakes of racist characteristics.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

It seems an obvious thing to say, but you should not imagine that we Pakistanis are all potential terrorists, just as we should not imagine that you Americans are all undercover assassins.

I think sometimes feeling that you've been marginalized opens you up to the realization that, in their own lives, almost everyone experiences marginalization, a kind of foreigner sense.

All human stories are migration stories because everyone is a refugee from their own childhood.

Time only moves in one direction. Remember that. Things always change.

I think massive migration is inevitable. As sea levels rise, as climate change happens, as fertile fields become arid, as wars are fought, people are going to move. They always have.

When the uncertain future becomes the past, the past in turn becomes uncertain.

It's important to have a non-nostalgic view and say, let's look forward, because if we don't, all we'll hear are voices telling us to go back.

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing gaily out of the house in your underwear.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

We change when circumstances necessitate it

Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls it. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us.

A hearing heart loves to whom it listens.

I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.

Movies aren't just supposed to be a representation of reality. They're supposed to be an art.

I think every fantasy reader secretly believes they know how magic works.

Not one of us can lie or pretend. We're all fixed in good faith in a certain concept of ourselves.

I and this mystery, here we stand.