“A single strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism... I recognized that i...”

“But since the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, terrorists have killed many times that number of people in Pakistan. Tens of thousands have died here in terror and counterterror violence, slai...”

“Human beings dont necessarily exist inside of (or correspond to) the neat racial, gendered or national boxes into which we often unthinkingly place them.Its a mistake to ask literature to reinforce...”

“What happens is my mind starts to go in circles, thinking and thinking, and then I can't sleep. And once a couple of days go by, if you haven't slept, you start to get sick. You can't eat. You star...”

“Our relationship could now thrive only in my head, and to discuss it with a mother intentadmittedly in my own best intereston challenging it with reality might do it irreparable harm.”

“...status, as in any traditional, class-conscious society, declines more slowly than wealth.”

“With me and India it's all about leaving and returning. Madras is home. It's a very complicated relationship. When you are away too long you get homesick, and when you are there too long you are si...”

“It dawned on me that no person is as poetically homesick as someone who has come to New York for the first time and glimpsed a small vestige of her home state.”

“But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about loca...”

“This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me”

“In some neighborhoods, faces mature faster than bodies.”

“My advice for aspiring writers is go to New York. And if you cant go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people w...”

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”

“I knew right then that I wanted to be a part of something that meaningful. I wanted to have something I was so passionate about that I'd be willing to risk everything for it. I wanted to know that ...”

“Do it with passion or not at all.”