Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

Novels are make-believe and play for adults.

Oftentimes I deliberately put ambiguity into my books so that... the reader is left with an echo of: 'How much of this was from me?'

Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.

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

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

The world seems concerned with Pakistan primarily as an actor in global attempts to combat terrorism.

We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.

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

When I'm writing well, I feel happy. And when I go too long without writing, I begin to implode.

When people talk about the death of the novel, they are speaking of the need for the birth of something different.

When terrorism strikes, divisive anger is a natural response.

When the machine of a human being is turned on, it seems to produce a protagonist, just as a television produces an image.

'Which is stronger, politics or love?' is like asking, 'Which is stronger, exhaling or inhaling?' They are two sides of the same thing.

Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.

As a child I read all kinds of stuff, whether it was 'Asterix and Obelix' and 'Tin Tin' comic books, or 'Lord of the Rings,' or Frank Herbert's sci-fi. Or 'The Wind in the Willows.' Or 'Charlotte's Web.'

Basically, asking me what kind of music I like is like asking what kind of food I like: 'Anything that tastes good,' is the answer. I'm the kind of guy who spends three times as much on his speakers as he does on his television.

Being outside the candy store looking in is the state of people today. Whether you're in a Pakistani village watching somebody in a car drive by, or you're in the city of Lahore going to a restaurant and seeing somebody with a security entourage coming in... you're exposed to people with more.

Capitalism is like the law of the jungle with a few rules. There isn't another system that works for our society but left unchecked, capitalism can have a dehumanising effect.